CHAPTER TEN
Murder always makes everything better.” The echoes of Maurie’s rash comment hung in her own ears for what seemed like an eternity. But Hermès flinched. He punched numbers into his own comm a half dozen times with no connection.
Your jammer is still on, she considered telling him, but didn’t.
She’d had an opportunity for closer inspection; the scarf was a knockoff. A good-quality one, but definitely fake. The silk’s copyright-infringed classic Hermès “brides de gala” pattern was exactly correct in all details, but too crisply executed. Originals were created by silk screening, not by a modern fabric printer. Maybe the police would not find a numbered antiques invoice record and associated lifetime insurance coverage complete with customer name and address to go with that classic scarf. They are going to get away with this, Maurie thought.
Nobody made any death threats out loud now, not even Blue Scarf Man. But the criminals stared at her and held their machetes like they thought they might need to use them. The passengers stilled as the news of who she was and what had been said worked through the group.
“Hey,” Hermès summoned his group, and they all stepped back away from the passengers. Something about Hermès still bothered her, but it wasn’t until that moment that she realized what it was.
I know him. The too smooth English this far into the normally French-speaking part of the country, and the odd bandana choice were all wrong for a reasonably competent bandit.
I know him. He was one of the bored rich kids Pascaline had enjoyed fighting with.
Maurie’s fists balled up tight enough to make her arms shake. Trust-fund kids were known to do stupid things. But to go rob middle-class passengers and to risk their lives too by fucking with the autodrive system on a public bus? They had thought there was a fellow thief on the bus itself, which would’ve made the heist safer, but they were also planning to break her great aunt’s arm? With the connections anyone Pascaline bothered to fight with had, he certainly didn’t need the money. He wouldn’t be as well off as a Sadou, of course, but still!
Hermès met her eyes and looked worried. He called out to his fellow thieves again more sharply. Red, who’d been negotiating with the passengers about what they’d give up, moved to grab the largest of the three backpacks of loot.
“Leave it,” Hermès snapped.
Rumblings were starting in the crowd now. Maurie could see the father who’d had his son rescue her comm moving together with a few of the larger male passengers. They had no weapons and were older than the thieves, but the father made eye contact with her.
Something hissed behind her, whispering that she should stay silent, stay still, and nasty brutal luck would protect her. Maurie would’ve chopped that phantom snake to fish chum if she could see it.
These passengers were going to fight. Hermès saw it too and glanced uneasily back at his own people. Somewhere a snake was laughing. She could see the python with the tire tread marks winding through the crowd of passengers. She glared it away.
“The bus is fixed,” Maurie called out, earning shocked looks from both the robbers and the passengers. “Driver gets on first. Then kids. You and you.” She pointed at the closest passengers. “Take the stuff. Everyone goes. I’ll stay.” Nobody dies for me. Not today.
The candy seller turned bus operator bolted for the vehicle. None of the robbers moved. Hermès winced, and the others looked to him—clearly unused to taking command of the robbery.
“But we don’t want her,” Red said.
The rest of the passengers surged in afterwards with no particular care for the order Maurie had suggested, though the ones she’d pointed at did grab up the mass of stolen property. Everyone crammed inside. Only the luggage was riding on the roof for this leg of the trip.
“They are leaving and you are going to let them go,” Maurie said. The blare of the bus horn announced the autodrive was on and that it had detected obstacles in the path in front of it.
The door to the bus slammed shut, and the driver switched to reverse. Maurie scrambled to the side of the road.
Hermès and his men cleared the road too as the bus lurched into motion. The candy seller was in the driver’s seat, and they’d just been messing with the autodrive. None of them wanted to be the live test of the collision-avoidance software.
The bus roared away at the autopilot’s max speed.
“Do you realize you just kidnapped yourself?” White said, hefting his tool case.
“No shit,” Hermès muttered under his breath. Their eyes met. He knew she recognized him. It hadn’t been that many years ago.
“We don’t want a Sadou,” Hermès called out to the others. He motioned at the equipment. “Turn off the jammer.”
The other thieves looked at him and each other uneasily. They were afraid, but not all for the same reasons.
“It might take the family a while to get cash together for a ransom if they decide to pay it,” she pointed out. “Or you could always chop me up and leave my body in that ditch.”
“Shut up,” Hermès said under his breath but with too much force to keep Blue from hearing and raising his eyebrows.
“The ditch is an option.” Maurie didn’t bother keeping her voice down. Somewhere snakes were laughing at her. “You could throw my comm in with me. You can see it’s made intermittent connections, so my family can trace my location. And then there are all those passengers to interview. And maybe none of them will recognize those two of you with the splatters on your shoes from when you were repainting the police station, so it could work.”
“Is she having a mental breakdown?” Gray asked.
“You should not be allowed out on your own,” Hermès declared.
White shouldered his heavy pack. The others were backing away. Murder seemed not to be their idea of a good time.
“What were you even doing on a bus?” Hermès demanded in exasperation.
Maurie shrugged. “I ran out of money.”
That earned a laugh from the group.
“Rich people.” Green shook his head.
“People like you don’t ride buses,” Gray insisted. “It was just supposed to be the witch woman. And we wouldn’t’ve hurt her. She’d’ve paid us double to tell her about who ordered it.”
“Has before,” Blue agreed. “Same guy too. You think he’d stop paying.” He gave Hermès a sidelong look and jerked his head back down the road.
Maurie sighed and sat down on her bag on the side of the road. “People like you shouldn’t rob people. You don’t need to.”
White snorted. “You think anyone can live off painting jobs?”
“You think you’re being paid enough for this?” she replied.
“No,” said Blue. He turned and walked away. The others looked from her to Hermès and back and followed after him.
Hermès shook his head at her. “Fucking Sadous. You’re all impossible.” He threw her comm at the dirt next to her and hurried down the road after his crew.
“Next time you get bored, try alcoholism. It’s more socially acceptable.” Maurie picked up the comm. The screen was shattered, which destroyed it. The touch screen sensors couldn’t read her thumbprint to unlock it with cracks running through the whole surface. It started buzzing anyway. Incoming call: Pascaline.
Maurie considered throwing it at the ground harder to turn off the annoying ringtone.
An old red compact car came zipping down the road far in excess of the authorized speed limit less than thirty minutes later.
Pascaline stuck her head out the front window as the car slowed to a stop. She flicked a switch to throw open the rear door revealing two back seats, both out of reach of the steering panel.
“Get in, brat.”
“I love you too,” Maurie replied. She shouldered her pack and got in.
“Yeah, yeah.” Pascaline belted in and started the vehicle roaring down the road as soon as Maurie did the same. “I don’t know what you did to Great Aunt Mami, but she’s both furious at you and very worried, so stay away from the north country for a while.”
Maurie buckled in, and Pascaline launched the vehicle back into motion. She was driving manually at top speed.
“You would not believe the shit Uncle Benoit has been saying.” Pascaline flipped down the visor to block the sun, as she veered around a bend in the road with only one hand on the wheel. “Something about getting a call from some friend’s kid who said you’d tried to kidnap yourself and that he refuses to be considered responsible for you.”
“I did not!” Maurie wanted to hit something, but Pascaline wasn’t paying attention. She was reading something while driving.
“Pay attention to the road!” Maurie snapped.
Pascaline flicked the vehicle over to autodrive. It engaged and slowed to the speed limit. “Someone rip your spirit out and soak it in vinegar overnight or something? I just picked you up from the side of the highway. How about a thank you?”
Maurie considered that. “Thank you,” she said. “It was very kind of you to come get me.”
Her cousin wrinkled her nose and thumbed up the level on the built-in air freshener. Maurie’s unwashed scent had permeated.
“How did you get to me so fast?” Maurie asked. “And why are you using Great Aunt Mami’s car?”
Pascaline shrugged. “Grandpere has a new project, and Great Aunt Mami has to prove she’s more supportive of the family or Uncle Benoit will get her kicked out. But she only likes me.”
“I, uh, noticed,” Maurie said.
Pascaline actually looked up at her. “You don’t look well. Should we stop for a doctor?”
“I’m fine. I just need a shower,” Maurie replied.
Pascaline looked back at the road and grabbed control of the wheel. She slammed on the brakes. The tires squealed. A phantom snake slithered safely off the road without receiving another set of tire tracks.
Her cousin slowly reapplied the accelerator and restored autodrive. She arched an eyebrow at Maurie, daring her to comment.
“It was nice of you to avoid running over the snake,” Maurie said.
“Yeah, whatever.” Pascaline gave her a wary look and changed the subject. “Check your comm. Do you see this stuff from Uncle Chummy? It’s all about Grandpere’s project. You’ve got a lot of work to do.”
Maurie held up the remains of her battered device. Pascaline handed over her own.
Maurie started reading. Uncle Chummy’s message was addressed to both of them, but she didn’t immediately argue with Pascaline’s expectation that she’d be the one to do the work. Projects always started that way and then Pascaline showed up when the technical nuances got too complicated and forced people to work together until they were uncomplicated.
Maurie read aloud, “Sadou Corporation will deliver carbon additive manufacturing construction powders to TCG’s elevator station in GEO using described spacecraft via a maglev-assist launcher, design specification attached. Payments to be made per objective completion points as outlined in design document. Maximum bonuses to be paid out if TCG initial DiamondWire™ tether reaches Kilimanjaro station by five-year stretch goal. Prorated bonus available through ten-year-goal delivery point. TCG recommends an east-west rail positioned on a mountain slope for least fuel cost per launch.” She squinted at Pascaline. “Carbon, huh. This is DiamondWire goo, isn’t it?”
“Yup, I think so.” Pascaline nodded. “Lots of speculation in the press about how exactly the tether will get connected for the elevator. In theory you could launch something super massive and sort of spool the tether out as you thrust upwards, but there’s a lot of really difficult problems with that which don’t end with building the massive spaceship. They can also construct the tether material in orbit and lower it down. But carbon’s pretty rare in near-Earth space. With the number of metric tons of carbon dust they want delivered, I’d say they picked option two. The first tether lowered won’t be the massive lift cord that they’d replace it with later. But once they have a narrow, comparatively, tether in operation, they can do their own lift with it to bring up all the carbon dust they want and build that second tether line.”
“Huh.” Maurie grinned. “The big space elevator people need help from the little guy to get stuff into space. And that whole east-west rail line up a mountain thing?”
“Yup, it’s easier to use the rotation of the Earth to give a launch the motion you want rather than to waste energy fighting against it. And let the slope of the ground help give you an angled launch instead of trying to build a line of ridiculously high skyscrapers to copy what the planet has already provided for us in the form of mountains. Energy from the maglev rail gets your lift vehicle through the first couple kilometers of densest atmosphere. You could use rocket fuel for all of it, but then you have to use more fuel to lift the fuel. Even with the maglev on a mountain slope, to lift twenty thousand or so metric tons, we are looking at around a dozen launches a day for several years in a row.”
“Pity it has to be a mountain near the equator,” Maurie said.
“And why would that be a pity? I read the notes too,” Pascaline said. “Grandpere says he’s already talking to somebody about getting access to build on the tallest peak in the Mandaras.”
“Um, hmm,” Maurie said. “That’d be Fako. Ancestral home of the Bakweri tribe and controlled by their chief’s family, the Endeleys.”
Pascaline gave a slow blink and Maurie knew she hit a nerve.
“Just how much does Endeley Adamou hate you?” she guessed.
Pascaline bit her lip. “Let’s get back to the project. I was explaining why we’re screwed and can’t do it.”
Maurie snorted. “You don’t have to do your eternal pessimist routine on this one. It hardly matters that we could do it if given a chance as we’ll never win a bid for this sort of thing. Some multinational company will buy a mountainside in Ecuador or Indonesia to win the contract and then they’ll probably even subcontract back to TCG for all the work. This is ridiculously easy compared to most of the miracles you’ve worked in the bush. We need an enormous amount of electrical power to charge the launch rail. Fine. Where do we need it? Is it in the bush somewhere hellaciously far from the existing electrical grid system? Do we need to have Grandpere influence government officials to get new roads built and extend municipal power lines? No and no. We need it at a developed site where there’s even some roadways already built. Oh, and it’s also near a deepwater shipping port not far from one of our refineries. But we don’t even have to fall back on that because the whole area is absolutely wonderful for geothermal. There’re two geothermal plants within a hundred kilometers. Their output is needed for the regular power grid, but it’s not exactly hard to build a few more. We need a maglev system. Can we do that? Oh, yeah, there’s a high-speed train that uses maglev running between Yaoundé and Douala. All the folks who build and maintain that are still around. Is it exactly the same thing? Nope. But we can adjust and so can they. Think of it as a nice dabare project. The spacecraft, I admit,” said Maurie, “scares the shit out of me.”
Here Pascaline finally laughed. “I love the spacecraft.”
“I thought you might,” Maurie said. “So, Adamou. You like him.”
Pascaline looked away.
“Really? That’s very interesting,” Maurie said. “Because Grandpere is suggesting that I should try spending some time with him. Aunt Julienne says much the same thing and expresses bafflement that he remained interested after meeting you when you had the bad grace to decline even a first date. From the photos, he looks…”
“Hot,” Pascaline interrupted. “I know.”
Maurie leaned her seat back more, feeling an unwelcome wave of exhaustion. She could feel hissing again. Or maybe smell them? Auditory hallucinations probably. She really needed time at Great Aunt Mami’s favorite clinic. The letdown from the adrenaline of nearly being robbed and kidnapped was likely hitting her system too. “I’m exhausted, Pascaline. Just tell me why I should waste time reading the rest of the plum deal somebody else is getting.”
“There’s no bid,” Pascaline said. “The contract is signed, final, done. The first payment hit Grandpere’s general account already.”
“Fuck,” Maurie sat straight up. “How the hell did that happen? We won the bid? You wrote up a proposal without me?”
“There was no proposal,” Pascaline said. “Our Uncle Fabrice—who is insisting yet again that we need to call him Tchami, I mean Chummy, to not confuse his corporate minions and overlords—has gifted the family with a plum.” She tilted her head to the side. “I think Uncle Chummy has very few overlords anymore and while he might have only a couple minions on TCG’s printed org chart, I bet he’s got many who owe him gratitude for one thing or another.”
“Wow,” Maurie breathed. “But the elevator itself doesn’t get built if they don’t get the carbon to spin into gold, or rather DiamondWire. We’ve got to try to do this. What’s our real biggest sticking point?”
“The timeline and our own people getting in our way,” Pascaline said. “TCG needs a hell of a lot of carbon lifted. I bet they’ll contract with several companies to get the carbon delivered. Other places have spaceports already built after all. But we do seem to be the only ones contracted so far. It took humanity one hundred and fifty years to get the first twenty thousand metric tons of material, bodies, and gear into space. We’ve got five years to throw about that much in carbon dust at TCG’s station in GEO, which they haven’t even begun building yet, I note. I hate how project completion always seems to depend on the actions of people you can’t even fire for screwing up.”
“Should we try to buy a mountain in Ecuador or Indonesia and subcontract back to TCG?” Maurie asked.
“Fuck that,” Pascaline said. “We succeed or fail on our own without giving away two thirds of the profits. I’ll marry Adamou if that’s what it takes to get access to his mountain.”
The prospect, Maurie noted, did not seem to bother Pascaline overmuch. The brush and grasses on the side of the road had given way to small farms and sun glinted on metal village roofs ahead. “Navigation says there’s a traveler’s kiosk up here. You’re getting a shower.”
“If you leave me here, I’m making you manage Grandpere’s launcher thing on your own,” Maurie threatened.
Pascaline rolled her eyes. They pulled into a well-appointed bus stop. Newish smooth blacktop paved the whole area and only about half of it had been claimed by vendors expanding an open-air market. Pascaline pointed at the small building which identified itself as the promised kiosk with pictograms for toilets, showers, and laundry.
“Those are pricey,” Maurie complained. It felt ridiculous to complain about costs where she’d just seen the amounts TCG was ready to pay them. But she didn’t have access to those accounts from here, and roadside showering was not what it was intended for—family tendencies to comingle all moneys be damned.
Her cousin handed over the key ring with the vehicle’s fob on it. Great Aunt Mami’s credit chip hung from the stylized snake circle along with a riot of cheerful bright jewelry charms.
Maurie flinched back. “I’ll pay for it myself.”
Her cousin shrugged. “Suit yourself.” But when Pascaline started to pull her hand back, Maurie snatched it. Without the fob, her cousin couldn’t drive off without her. Few people would dare rob Great Aunt Mami, but the woman still kept her vehicle settings highly secure just in case. Maurie wanted a long shower with plenty of time for a full lather and no chance of her ride being gone when she got out.
“You stay here,” she admonished her cousin.
Pascaline looked heavenward. “Do you really think I’d leave the air-conditioning?”
Maurie accepted that nebulous promise and got out of the car. Street vendors outside called out offers of food and drink. Her belly rumbled, reminding her that her last meal had been quite a while ago. She’d get something on the way out.
The traveler’s kiosk proved to be in decent repair. It had storage lockers with power outlets, basic autodoc test kits to help travelers figure out if they’d contracted something besides normal travel weariness, and—best of all—good showers with soap dispensers.
Some enterprising person had ripped out four of the lockers and installed a clothes printer. The model was a mass market style only able to produce acrylic blend fabric. Maurie plugged in Great Aunt Mami’s account and bought a full set of clothing. She chose an ocean wave print pattern at random and started the fast-print option. Accessing her great aunt’s account unfortunately meant the account autosets co-opted the unit speaker to play business summary updates. Maurie reluctantly listened.
She paid for an hour in the shower compartment. A deluge of sun-warmed water cleaned the grime from her body and she ran her fingers around her bedraggled braids to clean her scalp as well. The waterproof panel on the shower wall let her add in an order for a matching head scarf to keep her hair mostly out of sight until she had time to get the braids reworked.
Pascaline’s hair had been flawless, of course. Maurie sighed to herself. She could get Grandpere to reimburse Great Aunt Mami for all these traveling expenses, she was pretty sure.
The rinse cycle started. She squeezed her eyes tightly closed and held her breath. It stopped too soon, and she had to authorize the upcharge for another rinse to get the rest of the soap out of her hair.
Soap stinging her eyes got her thinking about Pascaline. They were really fortunate to have her. The messages from Uncle Chummy ran to an end now. She’d study it in more detail later. The essence of it was that they were going to be paid to supply raw materials to the space side of the elevator while it was under construction. They were to use a specific launcher design and acquire land to build it on. They’d get paid some even if it never worked, but underneath the mound of details, Maurie was certain that it would be far more valuable to everyone if they found some way to succeed.
God alone knew how Uncle Chummy had gotten them this project, but it was complicated. This new business was no simple pumping of crude oil up from the ocean floor using long-established processes. There were files with design notes from research engineers that her message reader balked at attempting to transcribe. There were schematics too. A lot of them. She had to pause her shower for a few minutes to marvel at a visual display. The overall system looked brilliant, with a host of interlocking designs put together, and all of them had actually been built and tested before. Operation-ready, several of the systems-design people from TCG had called it in the summary, but Maurie knew with a bone-deep certainty that there would be challenges and complications when they actually built the thing. Without someone with a real engineering background for their technicians to talk to, she had doubts that even Uncle Chummy could pull it off. And they didn’t have him.
Thankfully they had Pascaline for that. Maurie squelched some useless guilt about why her cousin lacked the spacecraft design, operation, or systems-integration experience she’d’ve gotten outside family industry. If Pascaline’d been allowed to do what she wanted, she’d have been on the Moon by now and be even less help. Pascaline would have to be the one to identify which of the Sadous’ many petrochemical engineers had the chops for joining this project.
Maurie emerged from the kiosk refreshed and smelling vastly better.
Then her comm in “play all” mode started in on the messages from family members. What in the vilest corner of hell was Uncle Benoit thinking? The uncles and aunts wanted Grandpere to increase the quarterly payments to their trust funds…Well, yeah, they were always wanting that. Somebody always had a better boat, and the high life only got more and more expensive. But they were going to have a vote against him, now? How was that launcher contract structured? Who specifically was the contract awarded to? Maurie dried her hands as best she could and tried to find the answers.
She dressed in distraction and left the kiosk still searching.
Pascaline scoffed. “Did you have to go full on spirit woman on us?”
Maurie looked down. The clothes printer had been filled wrong last time someone replenished the color packs. Her wave design had been made with reds replacing all the cyan portions of the print. The double portion of red turned the cool wave print into a stylized fire-colored snakeskin pattern. “It’s clean.”
Pascaline shrugged. “Great Aunt Mami wants her car back. She’s been pinging me through the in-vehicle systems. It seems that someone has hacked the comm she gifted you to override the admin codes in a way Great Aunt Mami didn’t think was possible, is ignoring her calls, and now has used her account to buy overpriced clothes.”
Maurie glared. Her cousin had clearly neglected to inform Great Aunt Mami about the state of Maurie’s comm. She filed away the information that shattering the screen and being stomped on several times in a near bus crash sent back error codes even Great Aunt Mami didn’t immediately understand.
“I’m dropping you at the airport, and I even got you a flight.” Pascaline shook her head. “No one ever appreciates how much I do for the family.”
“You are coming with me,” Maurie insisted.
Pascaline winced. “I think the initial visit to the Endeleys might go better without me.”
“We can’t do it without you.”
Pascaline looked away. “I’m returning Great Aunt Mami’s car. I’m not crossing that woman.”
“She can’t do anything to you.” Maurie shook her head. “Really, Pascaline. Great Aunt Mami is sweet.”
“Uh huh. But Uncle Chummy is throwing a few billion dollars at the family just as our other uncle is deciding to cut her branch off the family tree. We really know how to get in our own way, don’t we? Is she really sweet enough not to care about that?”
Maurie froze. She hadn’t finished listening to the family messages. Of course the aunts and uncles would be turning against Great Aunt Mami. That was almost as constant as their complaints about low trust payments.
“You didn’t know.” Pascaline covered her face. “I don’t know why no one else pays attention to anything going on. I’ve got someone in Buea who owes me a favor. They’ll give us the mountain and we can at least get the first couple TCG payments. You go be a hero and earn us a billion or two.”
“I am going to need you,” Maurie said. “Your engineering background is really going to matter.”
“I’m not that good.” Pascaline started to say more but snapped her mouth shut.
Maurie blinked at her. “It won’t be just you, but we need coordination.”
“And I’m such a people person,” Pascaline said.
“Fine, I’ll try to get Uncle Benoit under control,” Maurie said. “But stay out of camera range and don’t say anything, okay?”
Pascaline settled into the driver’s seat and rolled her shoulders in acceptance. “Good luck, cousin.”
Maurie dialed up Uncle Benoit and blinked to see herself added to a family conference call. A half dozen boat decks and beach house porches filled her screen with relatives.
“Oh, good to see you, Maurie,” Uncle Benoit said. “Whenever you’re ready, I can take your vote proxy. We should have cash flowing again by the fifteenth, my man tells me.”
“Excuse me, but does everyone here remember Tchami Fabrice?” she said.
“We cannot afford to support the hangers-on anymore!” Aunt Julienne said. “Really, Benoit. We don’t need the proxies for the grandkids. Just call the vote now.”
“Actually, Jacques had to sign off again to go deal with some foreman issue or other,” Uncle Benoit said. “So if we just get the half vote shares from Maurie and your boy Reuben we can get this moving without waiting for him.”
“Grandpere personally has signed a multibillion dollar contract with Uncle Fabrice,” Maurie lied. She’d found the answer. It was Sadou Corporation, not Sadou Moussa personally. And that meant if the family trust replaced Sadou Moussa with Sadou Benoit or any of the rest of the clan, they could take that initial payment and drain it all away without attempting to lift so much as a shovel’s worth of dirt toward performing the project. But they didn’t know that.
Multibillion. The words struck them all like a spell. Every person on the screen stopped moving.
Uncle Benoit recovered first. “You’re certain?”
“He’s called me in to serve as one of the project managers,” Maurie said. This time not quite lying.
Uncle Jacques in stained construction overalls blinked on in the video. “Sorry, I had myself muted. Let’s all give Moussa at least six months here. He’ll need free access to the petty cash, don’t you think, Maurie?”
A murmur of agreement followed. “Six months.” “Yeah, sounds good.” “Six month’s okay with me.”
“My boy shouldn’t have to wait another six months!” Aunt Julienne said. She was flushing and starting to slur her words from the drink on her table. Her usual wine had been replaced with something clear today.
Maurie winced, but she didn’t have a solution to the Reuben problem.
“Six months,” Uncle Benoit said definitively. “No one bother Moussa with stories about our discussions here, eh? We’ll all talk again in six months.” And with a click, he ended the call.
“And that is why you are the people person,” Pascaline said.