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CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

In the days that followed, Philip studied the plans and made only a very few suggestions which he relayed quietly to Pascaline. The pale Chao boy wore floppy hats too large for him, far too much bug spray, and a general sense of desperation. He hadn’t gotten any less intelligent than she’d remembered. Fortunately for her, he also hadn’t gained even a cubic centimeter of street smarts either. She kept watching for signs that he was going to turn against her and intended to tell everyone about her lack of real credentials, but he said nothing. He didn’t even ask for a raise.

But he helped!

Philip Chao seemed much the same quiet creature he’d been years ago when she’d seen him standing shocked inside the dorm room entryway when the resident assistant had chosen to inform Pascaline at full volume that she couldn’t go up to her room because she wasn’t enrolled anymore. No one in her fine extended family had bothered to pay her tuition that semester, and thus she didn’t get to have a room in student housing.

The precious, naive boy had been—on paper—hired into an engineering management position, because she’d felt certain he’d want that for résumés later. But he had both no skill and no interest in directing people, so he now served exclusively as her engineering assistant.

She gave a slow sweeping glower to the build site and the work crews. The people moved the earth around along the path where they’d soon be putting the maglev rails in alignment. They’d been on schedule for all the early completion bonuses. But now, they were on schedule and she was confident her choices were the right ones. Everyone avoided catching her eye, except Adamou’s little cousin Dibussi, of course, who responded with a brighter grin. Until the kid’s gaze fell on her pale shadow and that smile turned distinctly superficial.

The Bakweri didn’t care for Philip, which was absolutely for the best. Perhaps she shouldn’t have implied that their history was other than professional, but sometimes the mass of prospective in-laws got too possessive. It was fun to rile them up a bit. And yet Adamou seemed utterly unaffected.

Not ideal. Not by any means, but she couldn’t exactly tell her dear fiancé that half the reason his family had been delighted for their renewed engagement was a sham, and that she needed to have her old lab partner who, yes, she had gone on a date with once, trailing along because he had all the knowledge she should have had stored in his fat brain and his comm was packed full of the old course notes she desperately needed to maintain the facade.

Nothing else for it, Pascaline looked around for something to complain about. A bit of track where the rails would be out of alignment would do nicely.

The upper line foreman approached and gave her a greeting a touch deeper than a head nod.

“Ms. Pascaline, anything we can do for you today?”

“I need to see the specs for that curve.” She pointed down the mountain a fair distance where someone had decided it would be a good idea to add a small kink for the in-ground stakes and then twist them back again to follow a walking trail’s easier path rather than maintain the straight glide lines cleared through the lower mountain palm tree groves.

“Ha!” he said. “I knew you’d agree with me. It doesn’t match the specs unless we clear a few more palm trees. The Bakweri workers didn’t want to clear that spot, because it’s where the first palm tree in the whole grove was planted. History.” He waved a dismissive hand. “I told them you’d want it straight,” he added with some pride and handed over the relevant section of the design document.

“The first tree’s still there?” Philip asked.

“No,” the foreman said. “There’s a plaque. Historians care about it, I guess.”

“Move it,” Pascaline said. “Or embed it in the side of the pylon. Do whatever you need to do to build this thing correctly.” She turned to point at one of the closer stakes where a cage of rebar had been set up in preparation for the addition of concrete. “That height’s wrong.”

“No. We got that one right. Matches the numbers.” He pointed at the spray-painted numerals at the base of the structure. “It’s just this angle makes it look short.” The man grinned. One of the crew yelled over a question about where the gravel needed to go, and the man hustled off to do his job.

She looked through the plastic-protected site-build instructions. The measured height was written on the ground next to the tower of rebar. They matched the launcher build specifications. He was right. Worse, she checked it against her master on the comm, and it was still right.

Pascaline glared. It didn’t look right.

She snapped her fingers at the closest crewman and got him to take the foreman’s plastic-covered build spec sheets back to him. She waved farewell at the crew generally with the noise of the newly started-up gravel spreader too loud for speech. The crewman took the pages from her with a quick little bow and jogged down the line to return them to the supervisor.

Pascaline grabbed Philip by the elbow and dragged him up the mountain far enough for them to hear themselves think. Another rise gave them a better view of the whole down-track line. She could almost see how the rail would run smooth and straight up the mountain with those perfectly crafted lift vehicles on the track and their precious payloads safely stored within.

A distracting shriek rang out below. The flash of machetes reflected the brilliant sunlight, and a large snake lay across the open earth, dead.

“They shouldn’t just do that,” Philip objected.

“You’d think snakes would know better by now,” Pascaline agreed, even though she was sure he meant the snake might not have been poisonous and even if so might have passed through the construction site without biting anyone if they’d all stopped work and stepped away.

Philip did his typical open-mouthed blinking as he tried to come up with a way to explain, but he was getting better. He shut his mouth again without saying anything else. His comm angled just enough that she could see him write: “look up local snakes poisonous.”

“Try snakebite death rates and average cost of antivenom treatments instead. I’m giving that foreman a bonus.”

Pascaline turned her attention back to the track line. The wiggle in the staked-out route height was clearly still there. It hadn’t been an illusion from the spot where she’d been standing before.

“They better not build that section yet.” She pointed Philip at it. She had to snap her fingers to get him to focus on what she was gesturing at instead of the edge of the cleared area where a couple of the crew had started to poke at the brush with the tips of their machetes. “You see that?”

“It’s not scheduled for a couple days yet,” Philip agreed, and put his head down to focus at his comm instead of looking up at the actual site she was pointing at. “Though, this particular team is with the access road installation, not the rail line bed just yet, so they’re just running an access road.”

“Because an access need not have, oh, I don’t know, actual access for the line being maintained?” Pascaline waved her hand in front of his comm. “I said. Look. At. That.” She pointed at the wiggle again.

“Oh.” Philip somehow managed to pale, which was impressive with his skin tone. “Sh—”

Pascaline clamped a hand over his mouth. “No curses on the mountain. We don’t want it thinking ill of us.”

He jerked his face away to get his lips free, as she’d expect he would, but he also didn’t repeat himself. “But Adamou doesn’t…”

She silenced him with a glare.

Philip shook his head and turned back to the engineering issues he had the capacity to understand. Pascaline looked down the line at the little ants of people working further down. Most had machinery of one kind or another tearing into the mountain here and building it up there. Piles of materials with rough tarps thrown over top them dotted along the emerging build path. Above them, going up the mountain, the line’s route was less obvious as fewer tall things in need of clearing grew and the upslope cloud cover hid this nearer peak of the mountain.

Adamou spent part of almost every day up there in those sulfurous clouds, sometimes remembering to bring breathing gear, and more often forgetting. The Bakweri chief had found occasion to discreetly inform her that long-term lung damage from sulfur fume inhalation at the levels typically found around the peak were not extraordinarily damaging, but that there were always extra masks stocked at the little shacks around the peak which held other supplies for the volcanic sensor equipment. So if she should wish to call Adamou, perhaps every morning after he’d left, she might make him promise to put on a mask?

Pascaline had met that suggestion with the scowl it deserved, and the chief had dropped the subject. Annoyingly it was morning, and she had an urge to call Adamou. Just to check on things, she assured herself, not because she was the sort of person who enjoyed his presence. Pascaline brushed off the distraction, checked her surroundings to ensure no one else had approached, and snapped her fingers again to regain Philip’s attention.

“Well? You’ve had time to review the whole launch system. Are we screwed or what?”

He made a face at her. It took a few moments and Pascaline realized that “screwed” might be considered not the politest of terms if a mountain spirit felt like being picky about such things. She brushed that off too.

“Well?”

“The specifications for the line are based on original plans to launch water and manufacturing pellets. The course will be fine for that.”

“But?” Pascaline considered shaking her assistant to make him spill the details faster, but his head was down with the glow of his comm reflecting that shade of blue that went with the engineering computations software. His lips moved soundlessly.

“Smoothing the path a little more,” he muttered, “yeah, narrower tolerances for optimal launch instead of just acceptable range. That’d be a lot better.” His eyes flicked away from the screen barely long enough to take in a look at the actual terrain before returning to his calculations again.

That look of intense concentration was the one she wanted. Yes. Pascaline waited. It was the expression that meant he’d seen something that his training had taught him was important and his brain was forming it into words for her. She silently crossed her fingers.

“I wonder if we could do something about the vertical bend too?” Philip murmured.

He poked at his comm for several more minutes without bothering to elaborate while Pascaline waited with growing annoyance. He was very lucky she needed him or he’d be assigned to a muggy desk with only intermittent air-conditioning and she’d be up here on the cooler part of the mountain slopes doing the project surveys on her own.

“Yeah, updated specs’re good.” Finally Philip looked up.

“You aren’t speaking in complete sentences yet,” she informed him.

“Oh.” Philip’s face did the confused wrinkle thing.

Pascaline sighed. She’d have to spell it out to him. “Tell me what needs to change with the track route and why or I’ll make you personally be the first payload for the test launch.”

Philip’s face managed to go completely colorless. “This is not rated for human transport. Not even close. Even foodstuff like the freeze-dried meats that get sent to the Moon crews for special events would be pulverized before they left this track.”

“So the track as currently laid out needs to be smoothed,” Pascaline translated. “But I already knew that. So we get the line fixed along the ground route here, but what about the vertical rise for the slope?”

“I don’t know,” Philip said immediately.

“So I should put you on a flight home and hire someone else who’s competent then?” Pascaline hid her slight smile. He’d gotten nervous about overstating his expertise recently when he realized how quickly his suggestions repeated through her mouth got implemented. Uncle Chummy had some particularly helpful and, more important, experienced engineers that he’d connected her to through TCG’s network. She’d taken to running Philip’s suggestions past them before implementing major changes, but she felt no need to tell Philip that. Let him earn his paycheck. Especially if he remained serious about dropping them the moment he got a job offer elsewhere, she felt no need to coddle his feelings.

“Seriously,” Philip said, inadvertently echoing her thoughts. “It isn’t rated for human spaceflight and probably never will be. There are so many extra tests and checks for that. We couldn’t possibly get it approved.”

“I don’t care about other people’s approvals.” Pascaline thought he should have realized that at least by now. “And didn’t military jets start using rail launch assists over a century ago, on your country’s aircraft carriers no less?” She knew very well that they had. Part of her midnight research from the previous weeks had uncovered quite a lot of other financially successful, well-tested uses for rail launch systems even if no one had poured the amount of money and time into making one quite like theirs. There remained some comfort in seeing that TCG’s engineers had pieced together old, well-understood tech instead of handing them a bunch of barely ready ideas strung together with bits of string and entirely too much hope.

She’d seen the records of the prototype designs extensively modeled and sim-tested by top researchers at TCG. She reminded herself: We are merely installing Uncle Chummy’s design and operating it for a fat payoff. And continually telling his designers about little things they seem to have forgotten, like to check that material properties remain within acceptable limits for the temperature changes from near sea level tropics to four thousand plus meters.

She briefly considered explaining to those engineers that they could stop arguing back and forth about the cost to value trade-off for an enclosed track line. Maurie didn’t even pretend at engineering know-how, but even she had agreed with Pascaline that they’d be installing the partially enclosed version no matter how many centuries the management analysts said it’d take to have a positive return on investment from increased machinery preservation. Some people didn’t understand that the plants and animals who thrived near the equator conspired at every turn to bury machinery in green tombs and then the critters would lay in wait to eat, bite, or sting unsuspecting repair techs.

“Gah.” Philip shook his head. “I need to do more calculations.”

“So I’ll be telling the build crews to expect that some of the rail line supports might need to be higher than current schematics indicate,” Pascaline said.

“Um, I guess,” he agreed, “but whichever the lowest ones are can still be pretty close to ground level.”

“Nope,” Pascaline said. “None of them will be directly on ground level. We’ve got far too many creepy crawlies that would love to get themselves smeared across the full length of the line and mess up our tolerances.”

“Come on, Pascaline”—the whine in Philip’s tone was getting really annoying—“can we please go back to a nice air-conditioned building to finish this up? We don’t really need to go the whole length of the build line, right?”

She hadn’t considered checking the full length today actually, but now that he mentioned it, she realized that that would be exactly what an on-site engineering management executive should do.

“Of course we do.”

“Then can I go back?” Philip begged.

“No. You come with me everywhere. Where I go, my assistant goes.”

“Except for the parties.” He shook his head.

Pascaline raised an eyebrow. “You hate parties, and you can’t speak anything but English.”

“A lot of people speak English!” Philip protested. “It’s the language of business.”

“Except you don’t speak business English either because you’re only fluent in North American accents and can’t seem to get your head untwisted enough to understand anything else.” Needling him was entirely too much fun.

“But I don’t need to talk to anyone back at the office,” Philip protested. “And my comm is overheating, so I’ll need to get it into air-conditioning before it can do the calculations you need to check the slope adjustments for the rail line anyway!”

Pascaline pointed up the line. “Walk.”

He scowled, turned, and started trudging upward.

She passed him easily and after a few moments he jogged up after to trudge alongside her.

“We could take a vehicle,” he suggested. “It would be faster, and I could put my comm under the vents to chill it faster. Seriously. It may have battery-life damage.”

“Yup,” Pascaline agreed evenly.

“What?”

“Most electronics have shorter life in hot climates. Fact of life. There’s a stock of spare batteries in the supply closet if it gets truly dire.”

“You should not be just living with that!” Philip objected.

“See anybody with the facilities to do warm-weather battery-life testing for the current models around here?” she asked.

“After the line starts up…” Philip began.

“Exactly.” Pascaline agreed. “We get this thing up and running and maybe somebody with a design shop decides to rent a little space and do some lab work on site. Maybe some of the corporations with the bigger research departments kick in a little grant money for our engineering colleges and some of those brainiacs will be able to buy the tools to try out the pet theories they have about fixing that problem.”

“Uh, I was thinking more of just building some more air-conditioned facilities at key points along the line.”

“It will always be necessary to inspect the line,” Pascaline spoke with absolute confidence.

“Cameras are really good,” Philip argued.

Something slithered in the shadow of a scrubby bush ahead, and she grabbed his arm by reflex, holding him back until the full length of the snake could cross the open ground of the cleared track and disappear back among the rocks on the other side.

“How did you even see that?” he asked.

Pascaline shrugged. “I live here.”

“But not here, here. You’re from up north somewhere; all the Bakweri people are very clear about you being not from around here.”

Pascaline rolled her eyes. “I’ve moved around a lot.”

“Huh,” Philip said, “maybe you’ll end up like the Wright brothers and when this launcher is finished, every state you spent an overnight in will claim to be your hometown.”

“We have provinces, not states.” Pascaline looked side-eyed at him. He continued to scan through design documents unaware.

A roar of an engine overtook them, and Adamou pulled a battered but well-maintained utility vehicle to the side of the rough-cut dirt road. He hopped out and sauntered around the hood of the car to open the passenger side door for Pascaline.

“Drive you the rest of the way up?” Adamou suggested.

It wasn’t a two-seater, but the back had been stacked with equipment and parts. Philip would be able to wedge himself in, barely. Pascaline almost turned down the offer in favor of continuing on foot the couple kilometers more she’d planned to see today.

But Philip was drawn like a magnet by the rush of air-conditioning and crammed himself into the backseat. He looked back from among the parts boxes, blinking.

Adamou gestured at the front seat. “I don’t want to disturb your work,” he said. The passenger side seat was pristine. The drink holder held a fresh iced coffee with chilled beads of condensation running down the side. “It’s caramel mocha on ice.” He nodded at the drink.

She got in. This looked a lot like “I love you,” or even better, “I respect you and want to help you succeed.”

“Go slow,” she ordered. “I need to get a good view of all of this.”

Adamou preened.

That wasn’t what she’d meant. Pretty men should never be allowed to know they look good. It wasn’t good for them. But she winked at him, and the corners of his mouth twitched as if she’d said, “I love you too.”

Adamou took the back-and-forth cornering on the single-lane road quickly. The boxes in the back shifted, and Philip yelped.

“Careful with my stuff!” Adamou instructed when a small avalanche of the foam-packed instruments nearly buried Philip.

“If you break my assistant, I’ll make you find me three more,” Pascaline warned.

“I’m sure I can find you some excellent engineering grad students to help out,” Adamou said. “In fact I’ll send you a list.”

“I’m not interested in hiring all your ex-girlfriends.”

“It’d be only fair,” he observed.

“I’m not interested in fair,” she said, enjoying the banter. But she didn’t add the follow-on thought out loud: I require someone with Philip’s skills because I don’t have them.

“What sort of pathetic creature takes an assistant position with an ex-girlfriend anyway?” Adamou inquired with raised eyebrows directed at Philip through the rearview mirror.

Philip, wisely, didn’t answer. But Pascaline wasn’t quite sure if it was because he was tongue-tied or because he hadn’t quite understood all the words. Philip could be remarkably bad at understanding normal spoken language at times. And Adamou hadn’t bothered to imitate a North American accent like she had to when communicating with the man.

“I’m worth it,” Pascaline replied instead. “And slow down more, or I’ll get back out and walk.”

“You are,” he agreed. Adamou dropped the speed down to a crawl not much faster than a jog. “What are you looking for?”

“Anything,” she said, because she didn’t know. And she rather hoped Philip was able to see enough with the distraction of the constantly shifting piles. She could feel them jamming into the back of her seat with every jolt and bump in the road, so he was probably buried up to his knees at least in the backseat with all of the stuff piled around him.

“You get a lot of wildlife up here?” She decided to pump Adamou for information. They might not need the full mesh enclosure along the full fifteen-kilometer length of the maglev if wildlife was rare at these heights.

“Eh, some. Not really my interest. I can tell you more about the rocks,” he replied.

“Did you refine that idea you had for the microquake compensator?” Philip asked.

“Yup.” Adamou nodded. “Already passed that onto Maurie and the ground crew. It’s basic earthquake-resistant construction techniques. No need to reinvent anything on that account. Though whenever we get a big rumble, you’ll want to recalibrate the rail line adjusters.”

“What size are these rail line adjusters?” Philip asked.

Adamou shrugged. “I can get Maurie to send you the specs.”

“Please,” he said, “might need to adjust the heights of the rail pylons for them to integrate right in the whole system.”

“Oh yeah,” Adamou said, “I had that pier right next to where I picked you up lowered to put up a test one on it tomorrow.”

Pascaline punched the emergency stop button on the vehicle and hurled herself out of the car seeing red.

As she slammed the door behind her, Adamou said, “What’s wrong with her?”

“You tried to break her space launcher,” Philip said in a far more reasonable tone than Pascaline would’ve been able to manage. She decided to give the boy a raise without waiting for him to ask for it. Pascaline made herself take deep breaths in and out. She was not going to hit Adamou. She was not going to tear open the instruments in the back of his car and shatter them on the path to help him understand what he’d done. No matter how much she wanted to, she was going to keep her calm and go back downslope to fix that screw-up.

“I didn’t do that!” Adamou said. “I only had the pier height changed so that… Oh shit.” He hit his forehead. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m an idiot.”

“Have. All. Design. Changes. Sent. Through. Me. Please.” Pascaline said breathing between each word. She was going to have to have him watched. Very, very carefully.

“Of course,” Adamou said. “I’m sorry.”

Pascaline shook her head. Philip was looking at his comm, scrolling through design documents trying to figure out how Adamou could have accidentally been granted the authority to change a design, and Pascaline knew he’d find nothing. The workers had done it, because Endeley Adamou had asked. The workers hadn’t told the foreman or made a note on the earth beside the structure or warned anyone, because it wouldn’t have occurred to them that Adamou might make a mistake.

An odd thought reminded her of her pleas to Uncle Chummy for an experienced TCG replacement. A foreigner might have caught this. Possibly even without crashing a launch craft in a hypersonic derailment casualty. But a foreigner would not be able to see what had allowed the error.

“Don’t do it again.” She rubbed her head. “And I need to talk with your uncle, Endeley Bouba, about a plaque.”

She began listing in her head the respected people she’d needed to have banned from build site. Or no, that wouldn’t work. Ah. She’d use honor guards instead. “Welcome, welcome, Chief Endeley. Oh you don’t want to bother our Maurie or our Pascaline. Here, let me give you a coffee and record some notes. No trouble at all. How many sugars, sir?” Yes, she could see the solution clearly. That’d work quite well.


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