CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Maurie pinched the necklace by the throat just behind the jaws. Water lapped at her feet in the dawn light. Sunshine finally clawed over Fako’s double peaks to brighten the dark shoreline.
“Okay, snake woman,” she said. “It’s time to talk terms.”
No one answered.
This cove of the Wouri estuary had been used hundreds of times for baptisms. She’d checked. The first pastor from Fako South Presbytery of Limbe had launched unasked into a doctrinal defense of clergy from an affusion baptism denomination using full immersion for refugees who intended to someday return to a baptism by full immersion home church, with a digression into his thoughts on sins against the Holy Spirit. She’d had to cut him off to escape additional theology. The second pastor merely confirmed the site and encouraged her to attend services at his building on Sunday, adding that they had fresh roast coffee and makala in the community center after each service.
She’d almost decided not to come down to the seaside at all. But when she’d been in town for another thing and paused to buy makala—the street seller next to the two big churches had the best ones in town—the second pastor had greeted her on the road. Then the first clergyman stopped by for a snack and started to razz the second one about having repeated dreams of the Virgin Mary calling on her people to build a sky ark. The two churches were diagonally across from each other. It wasn’t surprising that the two men knew each other.
“I’m not even Catholic!” The second man had laughed it off and then given her a rather suspicious look. “Sadou Maurie and her space launcher. Saint Mary, the Mother of God, and a sky ark. It’s probably too much late-night television.”
Maurie had found the discussion interesting, so she’d had a few more talks. She’d discussed options with her doctor for stopping the migraine-inducing pills. He’d suggested meditation and talk therapy with a stress reduction specialist to help manage her ongoing symptoms, but Maurie had decided this was a better idea.
She pulled out her handheld thermometer and checked her own temperature: 99.9 degrees Fahrenheit. Early morning fever coming on as expected. Time to do things her way. She shook out the finely worked snake-shaped necklace to its full length and tossed the entire eighty grams of 24-karat gold into the surf.
Mami-Wata coiled up from the waves immediately before her and rubbed sleep out of thick lashes. “Don’t you think that it’s a little heretical to be calling on evil spirits?”
Maurie sniffed. “It would be if you were a demon. You’re not, though. Even the really old stories about you are decidedly mixed about your good-versus-evil alignment.”
Mami-Wata hissed in a manner that managed to display disdain. “Even now, you aren’t certain of that.”
“You,” Maurie said, “are a convert. Not angelic originally, but you’re on their side now. What I want to know is why.”
“How is that any business of yours?” Mami-Wata demanded. Her snake familiar twisted out of the waves and curled around her, spitting cobra venom this time and hissing at the waves. The snake woman trailed wet fingers along the reptile’s head to calm it.
Maurie refused to allow herself to be distracted. “If I’m supposed to be preaching to the volcano spirit, it’d be really helpful to know how it was the water spirit had her conversion experience.”
“Ah.” Mami-Wata wiggled her neck and shoulders back and forth sinuously. “I can see how you might have a point. But I’m not allowed to tell. Mary was involved and since the martyred weren’t technically supposed to be leaving Heaven and all, it was all rather a no-no.”
“She what?” Maurie gaped. “You mean to tell me the Virgin Mother was part of your conversion experience?”
“You think Paul did it all on his own?” The snake blurred down from Mami-Wata’s shoulders in a lightning strike, defying the friction the surface of the water should have supplied. The tail vanished beneath the next crashing wave.
“And now you’re blaming the Apostle Paul.”
“Oh no, not that one. He didn’t get this far west and south. Didn’t get much farther than Egypt on this continent, from what I’m told, and the Egyptians were very protective of the Nile. I rarely got to manifest anywhere north of Kush.” She sighed and then her lashes fluttered with delight as she crouched into the water and lifted out Maurie’s gold necklace. She held it gently and the heavy gold slithered up her arm to loop around Mami-Wata’s neck and grasp its own tail in the clever jeweler’s clasp.
“So, Paul?” Maurie prompted.
“Yes, Paul,” Mami-Wata agreed, petting her necklace. “He was born with another name, but after he converted, he took the new name of Paul and preached Christianity to, oh, a few dozen Bantu-descended tribes before he was martyred. Then he started witnessing to me.”
Maurie gave a slow blink.
“You have a Bible, right? And you have read it?” Mami-Wata gave Maurie a long look. “You do know about the blood of the martyrs crying out for vengeance and God promising them justice, but only later, because He holds back the End to let more of humanity go ahead and have lives? He has this interest in Redemption, you know. Seems to think a lot more of you can be gathered into the Peace that Surpasses Human Understanding. Sound familiar?”
“Um, yeah.”
“Well, around here the martyrs have more on their minds than eternal justice. That whole tradition of ancestral overwatch doesn’t vanish just because the souls in question are Redeemed by the Blood. Some of ’em come from matrilineal tribal groups too. That might not have mattered much since the Holy Spirit is super tough, and She’s got no trouble answering prayers with ‘not only no but unholy hells no’ when She considers a lot of prayers to be shortsighted and stupid.’”
“Uh, who?”
“God the Holy Spirit. Third part of the Trinity?” Mami-Wata rolled her eyes. “The ignorance of humanity these days.”
“The Holy Spirit is female?”
Mami-Wata gave a deep sigh. “And I quote, ‘God created humanity in his image. Male and female God created them.’ Sure implies a certain amount of female, doesn’t it?”
“I’m not so sure,” Maurie said.
“Fine.” Mami-Wata shrugged. “I’m just the far-more-knowledgeable-than-you spirit creature you’re coming to for advice. Go ahead and doubt everything I say. I’m probably unreliable and going to lead you to your inevitable doom anyway.”
“Uh, yeah. You were saying something about the ancestors.”
Mami-Wata gave a deep sigh. “The brats went to Mary. Yes, that Mary. And she listened to them!” Mami-Wata threw up her hands in exasperation. “You do know whose mother she is, right? They can’t go talk to their descendants directly. That’s not allowed. But that Blessed Mother.” Mami-Wata gritted her snake fangs as though she really wanted to use some other term rather than “blessed.” “Yes, that Blessed Mother arranged for them to be allowed to talk to me.”
“Purgatory!” Maurie snapped her fingers. “That’s what’s going on. You’re in purgatory.” She paused, processing the thought out loud. “But in some techno-spiritual way also able to interact with Earth while making amends.”
Mami-Wata made a grumpy noise. “I liked you better when you accepted that I was delusion made manifest as a result of declining mental health.”
“I’ve decided you’re a product of my overstressed psyche instead, and talking with you will help me process. So spill,” Maurie said. “What do the ancestors want you to tell me?”
Mami-Wata groaned. “It’s not that simple. I can’t just be a messenger. There are centuries and centuries of these people. They accumulate. I have to translate and interpolate.”
“Yeah, yeah, but they aren’t interested in justice, so what’s their thing?”
“Not what I said,” Mami-Wata snapped. “They love justice. Not only eternal justice, though. They want social justice.”
Maurie snorted at the archaic term. “What? Are they all from the twenty-first century?”
“The idea is hardly that chronologically constrained. They heard about Abram who became Abraham and his people numbering the stars. They want to be numbered among the stars.”
“Do you mean the spirits want their descendants to go into space?” Maurie said.
“Yup. And the Blessed Mother does too. She’s got a thing for stars. Ever since Bethlehem apparently it’s been a special interest for her.”
Maurie nodded. “Okay.”
Mami-Wata stared, mouth open, and fangs dripping venom into the surf. “That’s it?”
“Yup,” Maurie said. “Because we were going anyway.”
The snake woman shrank into her own coils under the water. She turned half away, looking at the waves as if she didn’t care at all what Maurie said next. “I saw that fire priest has been installing slivers of volcanic rock onto the tail of each launch vehicle. Telling his Fako that parts of himself are soaring higher into the heavens than any eruption in the history of the world, and all the volcano spirit needs to do to see it continue is to rest quiet with only the small rumbles necessary for pressure release.” Mami-Wata ran light fingers on the crest of a wave, lifting with it and crashing back into the sea surface. Very softly, almost inaudible over the surf, she said, “Do you think someday I could go, too?”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Maurie replied. “Tell the ancestor spirits that they will rest in power, and I will put their children in the stars.”
“I’ll swallow your soul if you don’t,” Mami-Wata promised.
Maurie’s lips twitched into a smile. “I’m betting even with the Blessed Mother on your side that’d be considered a mortal sin.”
Mami-Wata hissed and sunk beneath the waves. “I so wanted Pascaline,” the water whispered with a ghostly voice.
“And that concludes my brief on how my engine system will put your people into the stars with less fuel and more payload per launch in my energetically cheaper variant of the A-HRV.” The young academic presenter from MIT, Lucas Brown, grinned broadly.
Maurie’s eyes narrowed in recognition of the name. A faint hiss in the background was probably from the overworked air conditioner. She avoided turning her head to look for snakes.
The hiss came again with a mountainous rumble, and Pascaline’s comm also chirped with Adamou’s ringtone. Just her comm, that was all.
Lucas, on the screen, glanced at Pascaline who’d flipped to the back of the packet. “A-HRV is…”
“Aerodynamic Highly Reusable Vehicle, we know,” Philip said. “This is the forty-third time you’ve used the acronym, so somebody here would’ve asked if anyone hadn’t understood it.”
Lucas looked back from Pascaline to Philip and was smart enough not to say that he’d known Philip knew what he was talking about. It was Sadou Pascaline, the decision maker, who he’d assumed was an idiot.
“And,” Philip continued, “it was spelled out on the cover slide, again in the reference appendix background slides, and it also is the exact same acronym used by the legacy design you are arguing for replacing.”
From her angle Maurie could see that Pascaline was looking at the equations, not the glossary of terms. Well, if Pascaline wasn’t irritated then Maurie could let it go too.
“It’s man-rated?” Maurie perked up. “You said your people? And all the way to the stars, not just high orbit?”
“Uh, no, um, only a figure of speech.” Lucas flushed. “And nobody says man-rated anymore. Um, not considered polite. ‘Human-rating’ or ‘crew-rating’ for vehicles safe enough to have a pilot or pilot and passengers.”
“But ‘your people’ does imply some folks don’t deserve the full due diligence for live cargo then?” Maurie poked back.
Lucas flushed brighter red. “I didn’t mean…”
“Not important,” Pascaline said.
She glanced at Philip. He gave a firm nod.
“We’ll buy it,” she said. “Get the components that your prototype changes from our base model shipped here soonest for on-track testing.” The Adamou ringtone chimed several more times. Pascaline silenced her comm and turned back to the MIT presenter. “Acknowledged. Briefing received. I’ll go through your data again later. Right now you are over your allotted time.” She stood. “Let’s go, Maurie. Adamou’s waiting for us to get the quarterlies out to the suppliers.”
Maurie followed Pascaline to the door when a wave of nausea hit. “You go on,” she said.
“Need some water?” Pascaline asked.
Maurie shrugged. “I’d rather have coffee.”
“I’ll get us some. Meet you at the car.”
Maurie leaned her back against the cool concrete wall next to the door and waited for the hiss to fade from her hearing.
Philip flipped again back to the proof of concept numbers.
The door shut. The line stayed open with Philip the only person the presenting group could still see.
“Oh good,” Dr. Ross said. “I’d hoped we could speak privately to finish supplying any admin details Lucas might need to get the prototype delivered. And your company will need to send over formal contracts to legally finalize funding.”
Maurie could see the scribbled marks on Pascaline’s presentation copy left behind on the desk. It showed that she’d started to work some flight equations in the margin and left them unfinished. She always drew a large rectangle around her final result if she solved something. No rectangles were on that page. Philip Chao had the same equations on his papers with more numbers written out and several rectangles. He’d turned to some appendix slides and circled another number with the same units behind it. They didn’t match.
On camera, Lucas Brown held up his fists and punched the air in delight. He turned and high-fived someone off camera. “Sold! I am the best presenter ever!” Lucas crowed. “We’ve got a test site finally!”
“Let’s get some beers!” a voice Maurie didn’t recognize from among the presentation speakers said. Lucas earned a dismissing nod from his supervising professor, Dr. Ross, and he left the screen.
Dr. Ross watched Philip, eyes narrowing.
Something had just happened with those numbers. Philip shifted his sheet up so that it was clearly captured by the camera, and the famous research professor stared at it.
Dr. Ross gave a polite cough as Philip scratched down the rest of the math with a worn pencil on the margin of the printed copy. Maurie continued to be grateful that Grandpere hadn’t pushed them to try to do this launcher project as a paperless office and had authorized massive budgets for printing.
“Good to see that you landed well, Philip,” Dr. Ross said.
He nodded and said, “Yes, thank you,” without lifting his head from the numbers. Philip’s pencil tip traced along the neat line of calculations working backwards now from the number in the printed appendix until he got to a point in the middle of the dense page and wrote, “Units mismatch.”
Dr. Ross winced.
Ross beat Philip to getting the flight simulator program opened and entering the correct numbers into the algorithm to let it run. An error blatted out.
Dr. Ross’ expression turned blank. “We will get that fixed,” she said.
Philip grimaced at the problem and adjusted a few details. Maurie squinted to make out what he was doing. “If we increased the fuel tank size a bit…” he said. “Yes, that does it. The prototype can still fly and fly pretty well.” He looked straight at his former mentor and added, “What it doesn’t do is provide revolutionary fuel cost savings. It’s still better, but it’s only another incremental improvement. Solid grad-student level work. Not ground-break professorial award-winning achievement.
“And you took him on instead of me?” Philip said.
Dr. Ross flipped one hand as if discarding past history. “The other candidates looked better on paper. Say, um…” A look flitted across her face. The corner of her mouth twitched with something Maurie thought might be self-revulsion, her gaze darted away for a fraction of a second, and she looked straight at the camera again calm and self-assured.
“Can you make this prototype testing still go through for us?” she said.
“Maybe,” Philip hedged. “I remember the loads of rocket grants you had available to you for research funding, though. Why? Let your doctoral candidate pick another research line and spend an extra year to get his PhD. I do know Lucas, you remember. His family pays his bills and they aren’t going to cut him off if he takes even more time getting credentialed.”
Dr. Ross nodded fractionally. “Grant options are down. Way down. With the elevator construction going so well, the R&D funds are being redirected toward deep space propulsion, prospecting robotics, and low-gravity manufacturing methods. Earth-to-orbit technologies aren’t high interest anymore. Not even excellent single-stage-to-GEO ones.”
“This one’s not excellent, only good. And it’s a stretch, if a small one, to call it single stage when it needs a rail launcher to throw the vehicle and payload through the thickest atmosphere next to Earth’s surface and into the region of the atmosphere where the engine performs optimally.”
“But it’s still an improvement over the engine you have on the A-HRV model you’ve got now,” she pointed out.
“A cautious project manager would select the engine with the longer history of proven performance instead of the new one which was presented with flawed data, unless the local subject-matter expert argued for the change, that is.”
She considered him carefully. “If you wanted back into academia, I could put in a good word.”
“You could create a doctoral candidate position just for me,” Philip countered. “You have before, and you could do it again.”
“I could have an opening at the end of the term if a prototype could be corrected and have a successful test launch. I’ll send him to defend his dissertation early.”
“No good,” Philip said. “He might fail his defense. I want my spot either way.”
“My candidates always pass,” Dr. Ross said. “And you get your spot either way.”
“Deal,” Philip said.
“Deal,” she agreed.
Maurie let herself silently out of the room as the conference call connection ended. He promised he’d cheat next time, Mami-Wata whispered in her ear. Did you really expect him not to?
“Of course I knew he wanted to be a cheater,” she muttered under her breath, “but we gave him a job when nobody else would; I thought he’d find a way to cheat on our behalf. That little rat. Screw his deals. I’m telling Pascaline what I saw. She can decide which vehicle is the better one for us to buy.”
She thinks she needs the credentialed magic white boy to bless all her engineering decisions, Mami-Wata said. He’s her magic feather. Do you really want to steal her confidence now?
“Hell, no,” Maurie whispered to herself. “I should hex him.”
He doesn’t believe in hexes, Mami-Wata reminded her.
“We’ll just see about that,” Maurie replied.
And if you believe in hexes now, do you want one near that launcher?
Maurie shivered, and Mami-Wata’s snake familiar laughed.