Chapter 17
Vince fumbled bleary eyed into the meeting room, the only place he could think to find coffee this early. The hotel rustled with four-in-the-morning shifting, but the restaurant didn’t open ‘til six. He leaned against the counter as the coffee perked, then poured a steaming cup in his new mug. His favourite as his daughter would say. Why finish it here, he decided and he walked out with Smiling Earth cup in hand—he’d take his fave along for the trip. Brad was sitting on the cobbled hotel steps with a happy face mug, his own mirror. “Where’d you find java?” Vince mumbled. Brad shrugged. “Talked with the attendant.” Aahil with his son in the front seat pulled up for them in the Patrol, and they tugged the back doors closed. Mornings greetings in various languages mumbled around the vehicle.
Aahil drove out into light traffic passing on Boulevard de la Republique, turning right towards the Rond. Intermittent red and white street edges flashed by on either side, and the four remained subdued navigating the sequence of N roads, first 6, then 25. Vince watched the numbers drift by, his mind habitually searching for pattern. They passed the Hippodrome. Antoine would be staking his young life’s gamble on the urban race track business. How life could have been for that boy in some developed part of the world, or here but in long ago times. Riding high and free on a horse of his own across the grasslands of the Sahel.
Vince looked at the dark vehicle driving along beside.
“The president’s men,” Aahil said.
“Who?” asked Brad.
“They saw you fly your bird wings from the high stone.” Aahil said. “They watch you but they will never talk to you.”
“Why?”
Vince looked out again, and the window beside came slightly down and a finger flicked out a cigarette butt. He caught a glance in a reflection and could swear the two men were Asian.
“The president has his interests,” Aahil said. “They will protect you when you are in Niamey.”
“From who?”
“We do not always know.”
Vince and Brad looked at each other as the vehicle fell behind and turned a corner.
Past the Diori Hamani airport, they ventured on to never-before territory for the two in the back. As they left city lights behind, Aahil sped into the stretched out high beams penetrating the deep predawn darkness. Vince took his last swallow and set his fave cup gently on the floor. He turned to the sound of Brad’s whistle, glancing at the spreadsheet being reviewed on visiscreen. “How’re we looking?” Vince asked. Brad gave a thumbs-up. A couple plane loads of balloons and helium tanks from China gave them enough theoretical launch capacity for Phase II. “You definitely got the easy payload end,” Vince said. His end involved more freight; storage tanks from an ocean port like in Benin, and liquid sulphur from Nigeria. They estimated 40 kilotons of liquid sulphur for Phase II, make that 45 for contingencies. That list of contacts in Nigeria left by the first shift turned out useful. Surplus and decommissioned oilfield tanks could be an alternate source of storage tanks. Once a minimum storage capacity was in place, it would be a matter of timing to ship the SO2 liquid in truck load by truck load to fill the tanks. A pipeline was certainly out due to time; rail was another would-be-nice for both tanks and sulphur. Air would be too tricky. Trucks looked like the most likely.
“So we still calling our estimates preparatory?” Vince asked. “You say we can offer them enough of Phase I regional to call it Phase II national? How about schedule?”
“Yeah, yeah.” Brad nodded happily. “All items hold an expected-to-go status, either option. Just a matter of what kind of efficiency we can squeeze out of the launch process. One potential bottleneck depends on the kind of recovery rate we can get on the balloons. Say they give us ‘til the third or fourth week November, we should be able to do that Phase II national.”
“So the Phase I launches mostly around Niamey, a lot for show. What the president wants. But if they go for the national, we have a lot of transport up to Agadez. Excellent launch site, they say, just a lot of extra materials movement.”
They fell into silence again. Even with the coffee Vince dozed as the highway slipped by. He felt the vehicle slow as they pulled in to a village, past what looked like a military base. “Dosso.” He heard Aahil speak. As if on cue, they slowed more to pass through a high barbwire topped gate standing opened beside a guardhouse. “The soldiers sleep now,” Aahil said. Further into the village, he pointed to another highway. “This road N7 arrives at Benin. To the ports.” Ocean transport remained low on their discussion list. As they left the far end of the settlement, the flaming orange glow anticipating sunrise marked its spot on the horizon. Noting their route veering south Vince checked his GPS map.
As light spread over the Sahel plains they were presented opening curtains on the African semi-arid. Brad pointed at goats passing through the shrubbery. “Needs more animals, right Aahil?” he said. He glanced at Vince, telling him about Aksil’s green-the-desert effort. Aahil helped fill in the details, how his cousin had captured a piece of the desert back from the dead sands to create living grasslands, now pasturing goats and cattle high in the Ayăr Mountains. With laptop in hand how a desert nomad by heritage had learned of bio-mimicry, keeping herds large and tight and rotating pastures as nature did.
“Wow,” Vince said. “Great carbon storage capacity.”
“Yeah,” Brad said. “Be interesting to calculate.”
Vince fell into thought for a moment. He felt that new and overwhelming sense of frustration with how truly useful their sulphur dioxide project would be. When clearly there were other options, like this, it was nothing more than a political maneuver. Why cover up one problem with another? Except that it gives political gain to the decision makers. The most logical step to take with an excess of carbon in the atmosphere was reduction in emissions. Not dumping an extra blanket of pollution to offset the side effects of the first.
“We gotta have a look at your cousin’s pasture,” Brad said.
“As you like.” Aahil nodded. “A long journey into the Ayărs.”
Vince watched out the window at the vast expanses of grassland speckled with trees rushing past. A group of darker dots seemed to move along the horizon in the distance. He strained to see closer. Like Banff National Park herbivores back in Alberta, but this was the Sahel. Gazelles, perhaps here. “Any lions around here?” He spoke to the two sitting in the front. “No lions here. Only in W National Park. To the south of Niamey.”
“W?”
“The Niger River there has the shape of W.”
They stopped at Birni-N’Konni for a rest, pulling into a yard of parked semi-trucks. Followed Aahil, they walked up to a food bar to order plates of chicken on mounds of rice and greens. He passed the basket of Taguella bread. They were almost half way to Agadez Aahil said, and at this village they will veer directly north. He gestured in the direction of the Sahara. Close to the border with Nigeria here, the other way. “The A1 highway will take you to that country,” Aahil told them.
As they ventured down the road after the trucker stop, Vince and Brad chatted about their schedule. “Back to Niamey by air,” Vince said. Brad nodded total agreement. They settled in for the afternoon, grateful for the air conditioning, comparing numbers and strategies. They approached an extra secure military check just past Tahoua. Aahil kept his face solid as stone when he passed the letter from the Minister’s office to the soldier. The tip he left with the hand shake helped them through to the N25 desert road. As they left the drainage, the stunted trees dwindled to scattered shrubbery and they played tag with wadis, up and down, until even the grass was rare.
Staring out into the sun’s brilliance over endless fields of sand, Vince was overcome by an indescribable sense of pure beauty. Numbers popped up where no N highway signs existed, and the scene collapse into a chatter of fractal images, pi dancing everywhere. He wiped at his eyes. His father and that long ago numerical epiphany, now his fractal angel. He resigned to any message. What cam
e warned of the out of balance, an equation calculating iterations of impending error. Vince had to talk and he told Brad. His father had another drink, why couldn’t he? Brad listened, nodding in understanding.
Across the sands, still distant from Agadez, the earth color shifted orange to maroon red and the Aïr Mountains smouldered dark on the horizon. The setting sun glared through their back window. Vince peered intensely and fell into talking of his research on recent natural volcanic activity. Before Pinatubo, there had been El Chichón in Mexico—1982—and Agung on Bali in 1963. Tambora in 1815 was huge, creating noticeable climate impact by knowledgeable historians looking back. Certain volcanoes blew lots of sulphur while others did not—he needed find out more. Typically, each that did blow sulphur showed its impact on a global temperature graph but El Chichón had a large El Nino the same year and warming offset cooling. Climate can be complicated—not totally predictable. Agung, however, was a classic and the best documented with its influence of sunlight reflection sulphates dumped high in the atmosphere, so used widely in climate response models. A natural background to their project. He glanced at the sun disappearing.
As they entered the scattered lights of Agadez from the pitch black darkness of the desert, a movement caught Vince’s eye out the side window. He stared out into the dimness. As if something had passed them, but on the wrong side. What one of those ground drones Brad talked of could do with camouflage. He glanced at Brad but the guy was snoozing. He rubbed at his eyes, having seen too much today. He was probably just exhausted.
Aahil found a route to a hotel with a restaurant to end the long day with a final meal. A refreshing rest must follow. Tomorrow they needed have a look at the storage yard and find potential launch sites. “Then we gotta find us some magic air,” Brad said. “Those mountains got some height to them. We gotta scout around and find us the right kind of valley.”