“Very certain.”

  “But she is just a child. A twelve-year-old.”

  Zimm grinned his sideways dog-sneer grin.

  He knew Max Einstein’s secrets.

  He knew her power and her potential.

  He knew more about her than anybody on the planet.

  “Oh, no, my friend,” he replied coolly. “Trust me. She is much more than a child. Much, much more.”

  51

  “The man leading the band of soldiers is Moise Kabila,” Emmanuel told Max. “He is very, very bad. We call him le diable. The devil.”

  Max and her CMI team were sitting around a small campfire with the kids from the village. Everyone was super impressed with Tisa, Siobhan, and Max for standing up to the outlaws. They were also glad that two growns, Charl and Isabl, were “chaperoning” the team.

  “The devil and his men fought with the rebels for many years,” Emmanuel went on. “Now they work for the mining company. They are the enforcers. The ones who beat you if you do not dig fast enough.”

  “They need new outlets for their entrepreneurial energy,” said Tisa.

  “To do what?” said Siobhan. “They’re thugs.”

  “For now,” said Tisa. “In Kenya, my father has worked with men who were very similar to this Moise Kabila. Given a choice, many eventually turned to more legitimate business—provided they could make enough money to help their families.”

  “Maybe that can happen here,” mused Max.

  “And maybe, one day, the devil will install air-conditioning,” said Emmanuel.

  “Ah,” said Keeto. “But first he’d need electricity.” He turned to Klaus. “So where was your security detail?”

  “Same place as yours. Up in the hills. Looking for bad guys.”

  All the kids laughed.

  “Guess we found them, eh?” cracked Siobhan.

  More laughter. Max was proud of her team. They’d gone through something truly terrifying together and survived. That’ll build camaraderie. Fast.

  Everyone was pitching in and pulling together for a common goal: bringing electricity to the people of Kasombumba so their future would be brighter than their past, especially if Tisa’s father could work his “entrepreneurial” magic, too.

  Given the intellectual brilliance of the kids on the CMI team, no one was spending the night under African stars telling ghost stories or making s’mores. Instead, Vihaan shared some of his ideas for building a quantum computer.

  “I don’t understand these things,” said Emmanuel. “But they sound fascinating.”

  “It also sounds awesome,” remarked Keeto. “A computer that fast would put all the big boys in Silicon Valley out of business. Promise me one thing, Vihaan.”

  “What’s that?”

  “When you start your computer company, I get first dibs on buying stock. A quantum computer could make us richer than the benefactor.”

  “You got it, dude,” said Vihaan, trying his best to say it like Keeto would.

  They knocked knuckles on their deal.

  Around midnight, Charl, Isabl, and Yahav strolled over to the campfire.

  “Hey, no growns allowed!” said Hana.

  “It’s getting late,” said Isabl, smiling softly. “You kids have a big day tomorrow.”

  It was true. The arrival of the warrior bandits had slowed them down. The team would finish wiring Ms. Dayana’s house first thing in the morning.

  “I studied the wiring diagrams,” said Emmanuel. “I would like to help.”

  “Are you sure you want to stay home from the mines again?” asked Max.

  “Oh, yes. In fact, I hope to do so every day for the rest of my life!”

  52

  The team said their good nights, went to their tents, and crawled into their sleeping bags.

  Max was still jazzed from the great campfire conversations—not to mention the run-in with the marauding band of mercenaries who, thankfully, were ordered out of the village before they could do any serious damage.

  She feared they’d come back.

  And the next time, maybe they wouldn’t be called off by whomever it was that gave them their marching orders. But could the warlord be redeemed as Tisa suggested? Was there some glimmer of good inside the devil?

  Max was also excited about the coming day. They’d already connected the solar panels to their storage batteries. Tomorrow, they’d make a few final connections inside Ms. Dayana’s house and throw the switch. They’d unleash their sun-powered electricity.

  “Thanks for discovering the law of the photoelectric effect,” Max said to the Einstein in her head as she tried to unwind. “It’s going to help a lot of people here in Africa.”

  “Ah!” replied her inner Einstein. “Wunderbar. It will be a prize more noble than the Nobel.”

  “Which you won in 1921.”

  “Yes. A mere sixteen years after I developed the law of the photoelectric effect in 1905. Sometimes, Max, we must be patient and wait for the world to catch up with us.”

  “I guess so. I’m trying to be patient with Klaus. I’m guessing he thinks he would’ve made a better first finisher than me. He was trying to impress the benefactor by buying those bargain solar panels. Saving money like that might score him major points with the growns running the CMI.”

  “Perhaps, but since when do you care about winning? Your true talent is being passionately curious. Also, do not give up on Mr. Moise Kabila. He, like so many hard-to-fathom phenomena in the universe, might actually surprise you.”

  And, with a smile on her lips, Max finally drifted off to sleep.

  53

  The next morning, at sunrise, the team finished wiring the solar panels on the roof of Ms. Dayana’s house to the battery pack and inverter down below.

  Klaus kept walking them through the steps outlined on the thin and crinkled sheet of folded instructions that came with his bargain basement equipment. When the power was connected to the junction box that would feed electricity into the small house, Tisa and Ms. Dayana plugged a work lamp on a utility stand into a wall outlet.

  “Throw the switch, Max!” urged Annika.

  Max paused. Tried to think of something momentous to say. All she could come up with was her favorite Einstein quote: “Imagination is more important than knowledge!”

  She pushed up the lever.

  The lamp came on!

  Everyone applauded.

  “Woo-hoo!” shouted Keeto. “You did it, Max!”

  “No, we did it!”

  “And,” said the ever-logical Annika, “we need to do it five more times. Klaus procured enough kits for six homes.”

  “And there are plenty more panels where those came from, believe you me,” said Klaus, puffing up his chest with pride. “You just need to know how to wheel and deal.”

  “Actually,” said Tisa, “right now what we need to do is to start installing the rest of the solar systems.”

  That made Toma laugh because Tisa had, accidentally, made a bad space pun. (The astrophysicist was the only one who thought it was funny.)

  “I’ll contact my father,” said Tisa. “Let him know about our tremendous progress. If we keep up this pace, we will surely meet his deadline. The investors will come! The village will be reborn.”

  The team split into sub-teams and, with assistance from Emmanuel and other village children who, once again, stayed home from the mines, they set to work installing solar panels on top of five homes. The work was grueling. The sun, the source of all the power that would be soon streaming into Kasombumba, was unrelenting. The heat, sweltering.

  “I think it must be one hundred degrees in the shade,” remarked Hana.

  “Too bad there’s no blooming shade on a rooftop,” groused Siobhan.

  “The more sunshine, the better,” said Max, looking on the bright side of things. The very bright side.

  They heard gunshots off in the distance. Someone discharging a belt of bullets through their automatic weapon.

  “Le diable,” said Emmanuel, wiping sweat off his brow. “Kabila wants us to know he is always near.”

  Which means we need to move fast, thought Max. And not just to beat Tisa’s father’s deadline. Whoever was restraining Kabila might soon turn him loose.

  By nightfall, all six homes were wired.

  “The batteries will need some time to charge,” said Max. “We’ll connect the juice to the circuit breakers in the homes tomorrow, at noon. That should give the solar panels enough time to do their jobs.”

  But the next day, at noon, when the sun was baking the village and the batteries should’ve been fully charged, Max, once again, triumphantly flipped a power switch in the second home.

  Nothing happened. No lights glowed. No power flowed to the wall outlets.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Emmanuel.

  “I don’t know,” admitted Max.

  All of a sudden, Max Einstein wasn’t feeling like a genius anymore.

  In fact, she was feeling like a failure.

  54

  The same thing happened at the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth homes.

  No lights.

  No power.

  Nothing.

  To make matters even worse, Ms. Dayana’s home blacked out, too.

  There was plenty of sunshine but no solar-powered electricity anywhere in the village.

  “I better call Kenya,” said Tisa. “Let them know we’ve had a bit of a setback.”

  “It’s that silly Klaus’s fault,” said Siobhan. “His cheap solar panels are pieces of junk.”

  Tempers flared. Hot words and angry insults flew back and forth. But none of it generated any electricity.

  The CMI teammates started avoiding one another, eating their meals in different corners of the village, wondering why they’d come to Africa in the first place, except maybe to sweat.

  Emmanuel and the other village children went back to the mines.

  Max had let everybody down. Her first big mission, the one she had chosen, was a huge flop. Worse, a fiasco.

  That night, she did what she did best. She was alone. Under the stars. With nothing but her thoughts, which were darker than the sky.

  At least that’s where she was until Tisa found her.

  “Hey,” said Tisa.

  “Hey.”

  “Beautiful sky, isn’t it? The stars are like diamonds. It’s one of the reasons I love Africa so much.”

  “Tisa? I’m so, so sorry. I let you down. I let everybody down.”

  “Temporarily,” said Tisa with a soft smile.

  “I’m just not a very good leader.”

  “Even the best leaders face setbacks. However, it’s not whether you get knocked down that counts. It’s whether you get back up.”

  Max nodded. “In time to meet your father’s deadline? I’m not so sure…”

  “My father, of course, was very disappointed to hear of our troubles. But he told me to hang in there. He reminded me that it’s always darkest right before the dawn.”

  Max sighed. “I wish I had a father to talk to. Somebody to buck me up when I’m feeling down.”

  “You’re an orphan, yes?”

  “Worse, sort of,” said Max. “Some orphans know who their parents were. Where they came from. Me? I have nothing.”

  “You have us,” said Tisa. “We’re your friends.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “I’ve never had friends before. Not kids my own age. Of course, I’ve had acquaintances. People I’d say hello to. Mr. Kennedy at the stables. Mr. Lin at the Chinese restaurant. Mr. Weinstock. We played chess, some. I never really hung out with other kids. Didn’t know how to talk to them until I met you guys. But none of us is really a kid, are we?”

  Tisa’s brown eyes were filled with warmth and concern. “Your former life sounds very, very lonely, Max.”

  “Yeah. I guess so. But when you’re all alone with your thoughts… you can get more thinking done.”

  “You can do that with a team, too. You’ll see.”

  “I hope so. Okay. No more whining. We have work to do. First thing tomorrow.”

  “Max?”

  “Yes, Tisa?”

  “You can whine with me anytime you want.”

  At dawn the next morning, the Einstein in her head spoke up, without Max even initiating the mental conversation.

  “Rise and shine, Max. And remember what my friend John Archibald Wheeler said: ‘In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.’ Use this moment. Learn from it.”

  She sometimes wished that inner Einstein would just shut up and leave her alone. She wasn’t in the mood for pithy quotes. She needed a solution.

  She huddled with Vihaan, the expert on quantum mechanics. It was time to try that team-thinking Tisa talked about.

  “Why aren’t the solar panels working?” she asked.

  “Because they’re cheap,” said Vihaan, sounding annoyed. “Klaus got swindled.”

  “What makes them cheap?” said Max, trying to keep Vihaan focused on solving the problem instead of assigning blame. “What’s wrong with them?”

  Vihaan thought about that for a second. “The heat.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The hotter the solar panels, the fewer photons that get converted into electricity.”

  “Interesting,” said Max. “And have you noticed that, despite the extreme heat, all the villagers wear clothes? Those bandits even wrap their faces in scarves.”

  “The right kind of clothes can, actually, help you keep cool,” said Annika, coming over to join in the brainstorming session. “One can logically assume that the clothing worn by the villagers has been created out of fabrics that help them stay cool even in this sweltering heat.”

  “That’s it!” said Max. “You guys are geniuses. We need to make sweat clothes for the solar panels!”

  55

  Max, Annika, Vihaan, and Tisa (she loved any kind of science project) experimented with cloaking the solar panels with lightweight cloth they gathered from the villagers.

  But, even though the material kept the panels cool, it also filtered out most of the sunlight.

  “This isn’t going to work,” announced Vihaan. “Solar panels need sunshine. We’re blocking the rays…”

  “But something else might work,” said Max, refusing to give up hope.

  She turned to Tisa.

  “Do you have enough stuff in your portable chemistry lab to whip up a batch of silica gel?”

  “I think so,” said Tisa. “Why?”

  “Because I’m having an idea. A very cool idea!”

  Max and Tisa hurried off to “The Lab,” which was basically a tent with a portable version of what you’d find in a college chemistry class (plus with all the tiny jars and vials filled with powders and liquids you’d find in an old-school chemistry set).

  “This isn’t my original idea,” Max explained. “I read about it in a science journal about a technological breakthrough at Stanford.”

  It was true. Most kids riding the subway in New York City played video games on their handheld devices. Max Einstein read scientific journals like Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

  “Okay,” said Max, “every time we go outside, we emit energy into the universe. Heat radiates off us into space as infrared light.”

  “Correct,” said Tisa.

  “Well, a bunch of Stanford engineers created a way to remove the heat generated by a solar cell sitting in direct sunlight and cool it off so it can turn more photons into electricity.”

  “What’d they do?”

  “They layered a thin silica material on top of their solar cells. It’s transparent to visible sunlight. But if patterned correctly it captures and emits heat as infrared rays. We need to create sheets of the stuff and stretch it over Klaus’s cheap solar panels.”

  “No problem,” said Tisa. “Can you show me the article where they detail their design?”

  “Yes,” said Max, clicking the keys on the lab’s computer. “Fortunately, we still have enough battery power left for the satellite wi-fi. I’m also going to send a few emails to the folks at SEE. Maybe they can rush ship some higher quality panels.”

  Tisa and Max spent the next two days working in the lab. After they developed a small quantity of silica gel, Tisa called her father. “Don’t give up on us!” she told him. “This village is going to be electrified!”

  Charl and Isabl drove to Lubumbashi and procured bulk quantities of the materials the team needed to create sheets of the stuff. The local kids, coached by Tisa, helped with hand-etching and poking the pattern into the material.

  Two days later, when the temperature topped out at 105, Max and the CMI team covered all the “cheap” solar panels with the thin layer of translucent heat protection.

  On the third day, Max cried out, “Let there be light!”

  She threw the power switches in Ms. Dayana’s house.

  The lights came on.

  The electricity flowed!

  The same thing happened in the other five houses. The silica solution had worked.

  56

  “The batteries in all six homes are charging,” reported Klaus, relieved that his cheap solar panels had, miraculously, been redeemed. “Thanks, Max,” he said, sounding humble for maybe the first time in his life. “You too, Tisa. And Emmanuel. And everybody!”

  “Next time, maybe work with the nonprofit solar panel providers, Klaus,” suggested Siobhan.

  It was the first time she’d called him by his name instead of “eejit” in close to a week.

  “Good idea,” said Klaus.

  “I already placed an order with SEE,” said Max. “We have more homes to electrify.”

  Klaus nodded. “Smart move, Max.”

  “Thanks. We’re going to beat that deadline. We’re going to turn this mining town into a garment center!”

  Charl and Isabl were so proud of Max and her CMI crew that they suggested a special celebration in Lubumbashi.

  “It’ll be the benefactor’s treat,” said Isabl. “He’s been following developments here on the ground and is quite pleased with how you guys kept at it until you found a workable solution.”

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18