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CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Ethan drank black coffee at the party in the most isolated corner he could find. The bride, Pascaline, seemed to be trying her hardest to scowl but her groom, Adamou, kept making her laugh. The joy radiating out from the pair marked the center of the celebration’s crush. Other more self-interested partygoers paid homage to the Sadou grandfather and to TCG’s CEO.

John-Philip Jeffy had the presidents of Tanzania and Kenya arm in arm with him on the dance floor. They were toasting the couple, the elevator’s success, and their countries’ future international prominence. The president of Cameroon had his arm over the Sadou patriarch’s shoulder, having just taken a turn dancing with the bride’s cousin. Mr. Jeffy released the two dignitaries and attempted to demonstrate something called breakdancing. He’d had either too much alcohol or not quite enough. Ethan’s public relations queen, the former ambassador, and her assistants took turns engaging in more sedate dances with the three presidents and kept the CEO from overcommitting to or offending the favored dignitaries.

The new Vice President of Sales, Rodney Johnson, slid onto an empty barstool next to Ethan, holding a flask that’d been emptied more than once. He smelled like he might have spilled some of the contents on himself, and it hadn’t been a weak alcohol. “Hey,” he said in greeting.

“Congratulations on your promotion,” Ethan said, raising his coffee mug in salute. Congratulating someone else didn’t come easy to him even now, but at least he could see the headaches Rodney had coming. And, he, Ethan, couldn’t be blamed for them. “Vice President of Sales. Well done.”

Rodney snorted. “Sure. I do well, and everyone’ll say the elevator cargo sold itself. I fuck it up, and contract for more than your technicians can actually deliver, and I get the black eye. Nice thankless job there. Hooray for me.”

It sounded so much like himself that Ethan only barely got the mug to his face in time to hide his smile. “Accurate,” he said, “and I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thanks,” Rodney said. “Cory’s funeral is going to be in three months or so. He’s getting cremated tomorrow, but his will specified a wake. They are saying they need at least two months to get all the specialty alcohols on his drinks list ordered in. Some of his sons want to do it at Kilimanjaro even though it’s a long trip for most of the Aanderson family. One of them actually works for us and got invited to this shindig.”

Rodney waved a hand at the large wedding crowd. “It seems the Bakweri take open hospitality to a whole new level, and they invited almost everyone. Shit, they invited me. So, even a young Aanderson kid got to come to this wedding. And he’s talking about Limbe being the event location instead of Kilimanjaro, because the funeral attendees could watch launches and maybe send up some of Cory’s ashes. I’ll probably be fired by the time the wake happens. Invite me anyway if I’m gone by then, won’t you?”

Ethan set down his mug with a clunk.

Rodney took another slug from his flask. “Or don’t.”

“You will be invited,” Ethan promised. “You will also still be employed. Who the hell would dare fire you? You and Cory Aanderson are, well, were, you know what I mean. You’re the surviving core of Chummy’s dream team.” And Ethan’s mind ran on with the rest of the unspoken thought, everyone knows Chummy walks on water in Mr. Jeffy’s opinion… Except that I told Mr. Jeffy about the family connection to the Sadous… But could that really tarnish all Chummy’s successes back to the earliest ones?

Rodney squinted at Ethan. “I always thought you were smarter than that. Chummy had nothing to do with my hiring. Not really. He let me slip into the short list, but he was out with the flu the whole week of the final decision. Yes, Cory Aanderson had shared with him his cancer diagnosis and wish that he could somehow continue working before he said anything to Jeffy, but it was Chummy’s two assistants back then who put together the Cory Aanderson and Rodney Johnson workshare plan. I always knew Chummy wouldn’t follow through on promoting me into Cory’s position. I kept Cory going way past what all the doctors predicted, and damn we were good together, but I always knew that’d be as much as I’d get. Chummy thinks I’m an asshole, and Jeffy doesn’t like to work with assholes or with people Chummy considers to be assholes.”

He took another sip.

“I tried everything. Absolutely everything to get a handle of my own on Chummy. And nothing ever worked. The man’s a paragon.” He peered blearily at Ethan. “How the hell did you manage? He thinks you’re an asshole, yet somehow you got Chief of Sciences, Worldwide. Who did you bribe?”

Chummy’s entire family, Ethan realized. I bribed the entire Sadou clan.

“Fine. Keep your secrets,” Rodney said. He stood with the exaggerated steadiness of the extremely drunk and stalked toward the bar. Samson Young rolled up next to Rodney as he started to stumble and after a low-voiced conversation helped the man toward the door.

Ethan turned back to his own mug as DeeDee joined him with a new carafe of coffee. She pushed a tray with cream and sweeteners at him. “Drink something you actually like,” she said. “We need to talk.”

He considered Chummy’s spy for a moment and then doctored his coffee. “You’re too late,” he said. “I told Mr. Jeffy in person three hours ago. I gather you had Wilbur Fischer primed to alert you if I requested any private one-on-one meetings with the man, but your sneaky little digital tendrils couldn’t do a thing for you when I had Omer Ehrlich make the appointment and walked myself down the hall to use his comm line to do it.”

DeeDee shut her eyes. “Damn,” she whispered. “Rodney won.”

“He’s Vice President Johnson to you,” Ethan corrected. “But he’s at least at zero point one zero blood alcohol level now, and he thinks he’s getting fired. Hell of a win.”

DeeDee took in a deep breath and let it out again. “At least the elevator will be fine,” she said. She made eye contact with him in a focused glare that seemed unnatural and practiced, if still heartfelt. “Do not let them fire Vice President Johnson. He’s an asshole, but he’s our asshole. The company needs him to sell advance cargo space on the elevator, so we can stay in the black over the next five years. He’ll need a deputy, though. Someone way too friendly. Like Samson. He’d balance him out perfectly. But Samson and me will both get fired with the boss. So find him someone, promise!”

She turned her head down to a comm screen and scurried off without looking up again.

Ethan considered the second demanded promise of the night. He didn’t have the authority to invite anyone to Cory’s funeral or to hire anyone as Rodney’s deputy. Strange that everyone seemed to think he was the mastermind with all the strings. Chummy was the one with the magic touch. It had always been Chummy. And Chummy hadn’t come to the party tonight. Ethan rather suspected the man was sitting at home with his own intoxicant waiting for a termination call from Mr. Jeffy. Omer Ehrlich would’ve made a courtesy call to him after Ethan left.


John-Philip Jeffy sported a bruised elbow and a rip on the left knee of his tuxedo pants, but both the Kenyan and Tanzanian presidents had left his side laughing. He had Wilbur make appointments for Rodney to meet with each of them in the next week and gift their nations a certain—small—percentage of elevator cargo space in exchange for a commitment to defend TCG’s continued claim of Kilimanjaro as a land parcel with no nation-state affiliation.

Rodney would need a deputy. He paused. He did not ask Chummy. But his eyes lingered on Samson Young as the man used his motor chair to carry an intoxicated Rodney Johnson out the ballroom’s glass doors to a waiting autodrive taxi. Samson would be perfect for the job. Perhaps he wouldn’t be a good future Vice President of Sales himself like Rodney would be—was. But Rodney was young. In three or four decades, even Samson might be roughened up enough for the job. Unless Samson needed to stay on to assist a new vice president of human resources in learning Chummy’s particular style of magic.

Zhu Zhang Li appeared before him in a stunning qipao dress with a glitter of sunlit asteroids on the dark gray silk instead of flowers. “You never did give me the apology in person that I was promised in exchange for my very fine space rock,” she said.

“My deepest apologies for trying to date you inexpertly,” Jeffy said immediately, “and you never apologized either.”

“My deepest apologies for trying to steal your corporate secrets inexpertly,” Zhang Li replied.

Jeffy nodded. “You look gorgeous. Are you going to be getting in trouble with party officials for wearing that?”

Zhang Li shrugged and flashed a smile. “They won’t dare. I’ve got most of their mistresses wearing copies of this dress, and the woman singing ‘The March of the Volunteers’ at the Olympics this year will be wearing this style as well. Besides, our rocks have earned us prime elevator cargo space on the first hundred lifts.” She held up a crystal champagne glass. “Cheers.” After a slight pause she added, “And our scientists have just reported that the notes I delivered them on DiamondWire are both complete and accurate. They did stop at twenty kilometers of the nanofiber, though. That’s a hell of a lot of carbon, you know.”

“I do know,” Jeffy said. “Did Chummy give it to you?”

“No,” Zhang Li said.

Jeffy leaned back, very pleased. “Rodney.”

Zhang Li nodded. “And you told him to do it after I’d already agreed to give you back the rock,” she accused, “because you wanted to make sure he had the chops to make tough sales bargains when he didn’t have all the advantages.”

“So, did he really wait?” Jeffy asked.

“Yeah,” she said, “and his comm was ridiculously data-safed, costing my best hackers complete burnout during the three days he was on the ground with us. Then the data turns out to have been in an unattached flash drive in the clasp of the lanyard for his hospital visitor badge. Very tricksy. I approve.”

“Let me ask you something,” Jeffy said.

She raised her eyebrows and waited.

“If Chummy were available, really available, but were, let’s say, somewhat in disgrace, would you hire him?”

“Of course,” she said.

“It wouldn’t depend on the disgrace?” Jeffy asked.

Zhang Li waved a hand. “No.”

“Why?”

“I’d rather be lucky than good,” she said. She gave him a nod. “And so would you. He’s not really going to be available, is he?”

Jeffy considered the host of people celebrating. “I’m keeping him,” he decided. “But he’s not getting his annual bonus this year. Or rather not a second one,” he amended. “He’s already been paid.”


Maurie lay on the Wouri beach on a woven straw mat stargazing at the few bright planets still visible in the dawn light when Mami-Wata appeared early the next morning. The spirit’s snake familiar slid off her shoulders into the waves. It was the boa again this time, with the tire track death marks beginning to blur away.

“Well?” Maurie said.

“Well, what, you brat?” Mami-Wata watched the streak of the A-HRV vanish into cloud cover as the rail thrummed again with electric power from the mountainside’s op-test of rapid back-to-back launches.

“I’ve been thinking about how to get you up there. Astronauts are supposed to be obscenely healthy, you know. So whatever microbes or viruses you’ve converted to your cause as demon possession co-conspirators would be most unwelcome in a thorough preflight fitness assessment.”

Mami-Wata hissed. Her hair flared in a cobra’s hood behind her and her eye gazed down with growing menace.

Maurie glared back despite having no expectation of winning. Snakes had an unfair advantage in staring contests. A lack of eyelids was definitely cheating. And yet, Maurie lifted herself onto an elbow to peer more closely. The snake spirit woman’s eyes were fogged. Mami-Wata shrunk down to more human proportions as Maurie’s fear failed to materialize.

“Are you getting ready to shed or something?”

“That’s an incredibly rude question,” Mami-Wata replied.

“I’ve been reading up on snakes,” Maurie said. “You’re nearly blind while that layer of the brilles—those clear little eye-scales things—that you use instead of eyelids get ready to come off.”

“The future is always in a state of shedding or near shedding,” Mami-Wata snapped back. “Why do you think this’s taken me so long? I can hardly ever see anything!”

“So, what do you see?” Maurie asked.

Mami-Wata tilted her head up at the sky. Her finger extended toward a bright planet. “I see.” She whipped her head around to look toward Douala as if she could see straight across the whole bay and through the jutting peninsula sandbars and scattered islands blocking a normal human’s view of the city. “Not again!” She dove under the water and came up hissing with her hands around the boa constrictor’s jaws.

“How many times have I told you to leave that woman alone!”

Maurie looked back and forth from the hissing spirit woman to the equally hissing snake.

“We are with this one now.” Mami-Wata threw the snake at Maurie.

It wrapped massive coils around her, squeezed, and passed through Maurie’s body. The snake hissed irritation and tried again with no more success.

“Last days or not,” Mami-Wata continued to the snake, “you aren’t allowed to hug Our Magdalene anymore.”

“Is Great Aunt Mami dying?” Maurie demanded.

“Didn’t I just tell you I can’t see very well?” Mami-Wata replied. “How should I know?” The spirit woman beckoned and the snake returned from its angry coil to glide over the water onto her shoulders. Mami-Wata smiled at the snake. “We got ourselves a Maurie now, whether we have to lead her by the nose or not.” She turned back to Maurie. “You were asking about my last human. So, let’s talk about her.”

“About Great Aunt Mami?” Maurie said.

“Yes, of course. Keep up,” Mami-Wata said.

“But I don’t think Great Aunt Mami ever believed you were real,” Maurie objected.

“Just because she never believed in me, doesn’t mean I don’t believe in her,” Mami-Wata snapped back. The snake hissed angry agreement.

A wave slid over Mami-Wata and the spirit woman changed to a soft wheedling tone. “Do you know some of my people used to put their ancestors’ bones in the most lovely pots and tie them to the branches of the highest tree in the savanna within three days’ travel of the village in any direction?”

“Great Aunt Mami plans to be cremated,” Maurie said. “And you can get anywhere on the planet in way less than three days now. I imagine the residents living near the world’s tallest-standing redwood would have some objections to having its branches turned into a mausoleum.”

“Yes,” Mami-Wata said in time with the snake’s pleased hiss. She was floating with her snake in the water now and calm as the slow-moving inlet waves.

Maurie shook her head. “I don’t think Great Aunt Mami would like to have her ashes scattered in a redwood forest.”

“But there’s to be a new tree,” Mami-Wata said. “If Our Magdalene can last just five or so more years, the tree will even have its taproot connected to my land.”

“The space elevator as an ancestor tree?” Maurie stood bolt upright. “Well, I guess it’s sort of like a tree. But even if TCG let us, I don’t know if Great Aunt Mami would like that.”

“Then perhaps someone ought to offer it to her,” Mami-Wata said. “It was always only the most revered who had their bones so treated anyway. Besides, the foreigners are already planning to do it for one of theirs. You can’t tell me Our Magdalene is less deserving.”

“Cory Aanderson’s ashes,” Maurie said.

“Just so,” Mami-Wata agreed. “As if my Tchami Magdalene deserves any less reverence for all her years of faithful service than his long-suffering bones do.”

“If we send up Great Aunt Mami’s ashes, do you go with her?” Maurie asked.

Mami-Wata smiled. “I might,” she replied, and she vanished back into the waves.


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