Ghosts of Columbia (13 page)

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Authors: L.E. Modesitt Jr.

Tags: #Science Fiction, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Alternate History, #United States, #Literature & Fiction

BOOK: Ghosts of Columbia
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“What can I say? They’re lazy. I’m grading a test, and half of them didn’t read the assignment.”
“Lazy! They should have been in Europe while Ferdinand’s armies marched. So lucky they are and do not know it.”
“I did call to see about dinner.”
“I cannot, not all this week. I must beat notes and more notes. Oh, I cannot stand it!”
“Chocolate at Delft’s at half past three?”
“That … I do not know. There is so much …”
“The university can spare you for a half hour.”
“They are fortunate to have me.”
“They are. Half past three?”
“That would be good. I must go. Another student, and I must beat notes.”
I went back to the tests. More than half the class clearly hadn’t read the assignment. In one way, it made things very easy. It doesn’t take that long to flunk students who have no idea of the question. What takes time is determining the degree of knowledge exhibited. When there isn’t any, it’s quick. Half the class flunked, and only one student received an A. There were two B’s, and the rest of those who passed got C’s.
I gathered up both papers and exams and stuffed them into my folder, then headed back over to Smythe for my eleven o’clock.
I offered a smile to Gertrude, who was raking leaves across the green under a gray sky. She smiled vacantly back and continued raking, happy with the routine work. Hector did not even look up from his perfectly placed piles of soggy leaves.
Natural Resources 1A was the intro course, and most of us in the department had to teach it some of the time. Although it was basic, very basic, you would have thought none of the students had ever even considered the environment and natural resources.
We were working on the water cycle. Now, the whole basis of the water cycle is pretty simple. There’s so much water in the world. The amount doesn’t change
much, and the question really is how much is usable for plant and animal life, particularly human beings, and how changes in the cycle affect that.
“There’s enough water in the world that if the earth’s surface were flat, which obviously it’s not, we’d all be a mile under water. So why, Miss Haasfeldt, do we have drought conditions in the Saheel?”
“There’s not enough water there.”
I smiled. It was hard, but I smiled. “A little more detail, please. A drought means that there isn’t enough water. With all that water in the oceans, why do we have a drought in mid-north Africa?”
“Well, it’s the wind patterns …”
“What about the wind patterns?”
I tried not to shake my head too much. After all, they would be the ones running society before too long.
After the intro course, I ducked by the snack line in the student activities building and picked up a sandwich and tea. I ate alone, quickly, before I headed down to the post centre.
Besides two advertising circulars and the weekly edition of Newsweek, there was a letter from my mother.
“See!” exclaimed Maurice. “We do deliver the good material.”
“Sometimes.”
“Bother on ye, Doktor.”
I grinned and opened the letter.
Dearest Johan,
I appreciated your letter of last week, and was delighted that you had managed to bring back the apple trees and even the old pear. While I do miss the old place, my visits to you in the warmer months are more than enough, and I certainly do not miss the winters!
Anna and I went to New Amsterdam yesterday to see
Miss Singapore.
It was good, but terribly depressing. I am glad you did not enter the Air Corps until after that sad situation was over. Your father always felt that we should have annexed the Sandwich Islands much earlier, and that having a big naval base at Pearl Harbor would have prevented much of the disaster in the Pacific. I don’t know, only that the play was most moving.
I know that Llysette makes you happy—she seems very warm—but you come from very different backgrounds, and I hope you will be gentle with her. She needs much kindness, I think. I also wonder if the war in Europe took a little something out of her. I cannot say what it might be, and you can discount this as an old woman’s fancy.
Here a few leaves still hang on the trees, but they will be gone before long. You were kind to invite me up again, but that week we are going to visit Aunt Elisabet in Baltimore. She is ninety-three, and I do not know
how much longer she will be around. She still does beautiful needlework, though.
I enjoyed your article. The finer points were beyond me, but I did get the message. Anna liked it, too, and she made a copy for Douglas. He posted it in his office.
I hope you can see your way clear to stop by when you get a chance in that busy schedule of yours….
I folded the letter back into the envelope as I finished climbing the stairs up to the lower campus.
My two o’clock was Environmental Politics 2B. Since most of them had taken the previous course from me, they knew what to expect. Most of them actually had read at least some of the assignment.
By the follow-on 2B class, we worked more on a discussion basis.
“Mr. Quellan, what are the basic trade-offs between incentive-based and command-and-control environmental laws?”
“Well, uhhh … When you give businesses incentives, it’s in their interest to follow the laws.”
“Please be more specific. Do you mean it’s not in their interest to follow a command-and-control law that will fine them or put them in prison?”
“No, sir. I mean, I meant that with incentives they make money or lose less money by following the law. They will obey a command law, but they don’t want to.”
“Why not?”
Sometimes it was like pulling teeth. We hashed through that section, finishing up just before half-past three. I rushed down to Delft’s and still got there before Llysette, but not by much.
Victor had just set the chocolate and biscuits on the table when she stepped into the greenhouse section of the cafe.
“Bienvenue,
Doktor duBoise.” Victor offered her a sweeping bow.
I did him one better and kissed her hand.
“Enchanté, mademoiselle.”
“Johan, Victor, I have need of the chocolate.”
Victor bowed and scraped away, and Llysette slumped into the chair. She sipped the chocolate, then bit into a biscuit.
“They are impossible … I stood on the stage of the Académie Royale, and to beat notes I must?”
“I ran a government ministry, and I have to give tests every class to get them to read their assignments?” I bit through a biscuit and sprayed crumbs across the wooden surface of the table.
“Johan … I did not come to discuss the students. To avoid them I came.”
“Do you think that our hoopsters will win their korfball game tonight?”
“Korfball? Why do you ask such a thing?”
“Why not? Or would you rather I discussed the relative merits of postclassic Mozart as compared to Beethoven?”
“No music, please.”
I sipped the hot chocolate before saying more. “David—the doktor Doniger—was worried about an article I wrote, because the dean was concerned it would hurt fund-raising. I made a politically inappropriate statement.
”
Tears welled in the corner of her eyes. “I hate this.
”
I squeezed her hand, and she squeezed back.
“Did you know that Michener’s new book deals with the Sandwich Islands?”
We discussed literature until the clock struck four, and Llysette looked up. “My time … it is gone.” She took a last bite of her biscuit and drained the chocolate, then rose and pulled her cape around her.
As I stood and left three dollars on the table for Victor, I suddenly realized that I had missed at least fifteen minutes of the departmental meeting.
“You look disturbed.”
“It has been one of those days. I forgot that David moved the departmental meeting up to a quarter to four.”
“It is important?”
“David thinks it is.”
“Ah, the chairs. They think … what is the use?” She bent toward me and pecked my cheek. “Later this week, I will see you?”
“I don’t know. When you are free, I’m not, and I’m tied to the dinner in Columbia. How about Saturday?”
“Mais oui.”
She looked at her watch. “I must go.”
She scurried away and up the hill. I followed more sedately. If I were going to be late, late I would be.
David looked up as I slipped into the corner of the seminar room.
“I thought I had made the time change clear to everyone.” His voice was mild.
“You did.” I smiled. “I couldn’t change a previous engagement.”
“As we were discussing, we are being required to cut one course from our elective load next term. Since Doktor Dokus will be on sabbatical, we will put a zero cap on registrations on Natural Resources Three-B. That’s the Ecology of Wetlands course. There are no seniors who need it to graduate.”
“Is that wise?” asked Grimaldi. “Why don’t we cap one of the baby eco courses?”
“That’s where we get almost fifteen percent of our majors,” countered Wilhelm Mondriaan.
“If we cancel the wetlands course—”
“Zero-capping is not a cancellation. That keeps the course options open.”
“It’s the same thing,” snorted Grimaldi.
I sat back and listened.
After the meeting, which dragged on until past four-thirty, I reclaimed my folder from my office, locked up, and headed to the faculty car park.
I stopped by the Stanley, unloaded my folder. Then, with an exasperated shrug, I relocked the Stanley and marched up toward the Physical Sciences building, but instead of going through the front entrance, I took the narrow walkway around the downhill side as if I were headed to the Student Center.
Since I knew what I was looking for as I walked unconcernedly toward the center, I found them—inconspicuous little brown boxlike squares, heat sensors, probably with directional scanners behind the thin cloth shields. They only covered the right rear corner of the building. The other thing I noticed was that the laboratory windows did not look like they had been painted black from the outside. They looked like the silvery gray of heat-reflective glass. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to keep Branston-Hay’s research very low-profile, so much trouble that I felt stupid. I should have seen it, and yet I had been bumbling around, transparently pumping the good doktor. I shook my head and kept walking. Where had my brains been? I circled back to the Stanley the long way, feeling more and more foolish by the moment—and more scared.
Tired as I was, I hoped I could sleep—without nightmares—but at least Marie would have left me the main course of a dinner. It was definitely a luxury having her come every day, but I felt better when the house was spotless, and she liked the fact that I didn’t hold her to fixed hours so long as she got the job done.
As I drove out of the car park, I did note that Llysette’s Reo was still there.
W
ednesday morning came too soon, even for me, and I usually like mornings. But I was dutiful and forced myself through the running and the exercises. My legs still ached, and the leaves by the stone walls smelled half of fall and half of mold.
With a look at my waistline, and a groan as I recalled Tuesday’s breakfast, I held myself to plain toast, fruit, and unsweetened tea. Then I took a shower and dressed. My stomach growled, and I said, “Down, boy.” It didn’t help.
The trip south to Zuider seemed longer than usual, perhaps because I got stuck behind a hay truck until I reached the passing zone near the turnoff for Gairloch. I ended up sneezing for another five miles, and my nose itched until I got to the outskirts of Zuider. Across the town beach I could see whitecaps out on the big lake, but at least the morning was clear and sunny. I even whistled a bit as I parked the Stanley in the lot outside LBI.
Bruce had two long boxes and a small one on the counter. One of the long
ones lay open, and the gadget within looked something like a ray gun from the paperbacks, not at all like a rifle, except in general shape.
“Two?” I raised my eyebrows. “Do they both work?”
“I thought about it. You’ll need two. One for show, whatever that is, and one for you.” Bruce smiled. “They generate a damned funny magnetic field, enough to blow my breakers. The batteries are standard rechargeables.”
I had another thought. “No fingerprints?” .
“No. All the components are standard, too. This isn’t signed artwork.”
“And the little one?”
“That’s your file gadget. Just hook it into the external port. I assume you have the programware.”
“Sort of.”
“One of those deals? I don’t envy you.”
My stomach answered with another growl. Bruce laughed. I shook my head and handed him the rest of the fee in bills.
“You sure this won’t break you?”
“Money isn’t the issue.” The worst of it was that I meant that, and, while I may not be a totally typical Dutchman, I’m certainly not a free spender. It wasn’t that I liked spending money; it was the feeling that if I didn’t get ahead of the game I wasn’t going to be around to do much saving or amassing of capital—the modern variety of “your money or your life.”
I loaded all three boxes in the front trunk of the Stanley, and sped back to Vanderbraak Centre, hitting eighty only once. I stopped by Samaha’s for my paper and the post centre for whatever awaited me there.
Only two bills—from Wijk River Oil and Sammis Pump Repair—graced my postbox. I peered around the empty post window at Maurice. “It’s all junk post.”
“Doktor, we just deliver. We can’t improve the quality of your enemies.”
“Thanks!”
“We do our best.”
I got to the office not that long after Gilda, and I even managed to say, “Good day.”
“Good day to you, Johan.” She shook her head and grinned. “I heard that you suggested to Doktor Doniger that faculty meetings were not sacrosanct.”
“I believe I was ill.”
“Good. I wish more people were.”
“Gilda?” David marched through the door. “Here are my corrections to the minutes of yesterday’s meeting.”
“Yes, Doktor Doniger.” Her voice was cool and formal.
He turned to me. “Good morning, Johan.”
“Good morning, David.”
“We need to talk, Johan, but I’m off to a meeting with the dean. Will you be around later?”
“I’ll be in my office from about noon until just before my two o’clock.”
“I don’t know. Well, we’ll play it by ear.” He turned back to Gilda. “If you could have those ready to go by the time I get back?”
“Yes, Doktor Doniger.”
David swung his battered brown case off Gilda’s desk and marched out the door and off to the administration building. Gilda and I looked at each other, and I shrugged. She took a deep breath and picked up the papers David had left.
Once I got to my office and set down my folder, I opened the
Asten Post-Courier
. When I saw the story below the fold, my stomach churned.
KYOTO (INS)—The Japanese Minister of the Imperial Navy announced on Monday night that Japan had successfully built and tested a new class of submersible. The
Dragon of the Sea
is an electric submersible powered by a selfcontained nuclear power plant. The ship has a theoretically unlimited range without surfacing.
The Japanese ship was denounced by a spokesman for Ferdinand VI as a violation of the Treaty of Columbia …
Gao TseKung, Warlord for Defense of Chung Kuo, declared that deployment of the
Dragon of the Sea
in the Sea of Japan would be a blatant violation of the Nuclear Limitation Agreement …
Speaker Hartpence warned against the development of “naval adventurism” that could restrict international trade to the detriment of all …
The story on page two didn’t help my growling stomach either.
MUNICH (INS)—A raging fire blazed through the difference engine center of the Imperial Research Service laboratories here last night. “Fortunately, the fire did not destroy any vital research,” stated Frideric VonBulow, deputy marshal for imperial research.
Outside observers covertly doubted the deputy marshal’s claim. “If that were so, why do they have hundreds of technicians sifting through the ruins?” asked one bystander.
Well-placed sources indicate that the Munich laboratories were the center of highly secret research on psychic phenomena, a claim disputed immediately by deputy marshal VonBulow. “While all research has import for the Empire and the people of Austro-Hungary, certainly the research at Munich was of no greater or lesser import than in other research centers.”
The wireline bell rang. “Johan Eschbach.”
“Doktor Eschbach, this is Chief Waetjen down at the watch center. I wonder if you would have a moment to come down and chat with me this afternoon.”
“I could do it from one to two. Might I ask what you had in mind?”
“Just follow-up inquiries on the Miller murder. It won’t take long. Quarter past one?”
“That would be fine.”
I set down the handset and then leaned back in the too-stiff wooden chair. The chief had been too friendly. Why was he contacting me?
There wasn’t much I could do about that. So I worked on the next set of unannounced tests for my section of the intro course, Natural Resources 1A. That was on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Then came the time to do battle over environmental economics.
The green was jammed with scurrying students, and one or two actually waved or said hello as I plowed toward Smythe.
Once my own students were seated and relative calm prevailed within the confines of Smythe Hall, I handed out the Environmental Economics papers without a word, then watched their faces. At least half of them failed to understand. That was clear from the mutterings and murmurings.
“But …”
“I don’t understand …”
“Supposed to have all term for the reading …”
“Ladies and gentlemen. I cannot call you scholars. Not yet. Perhaps not ever. You cannot learn if you refuse to read. You cannot learn if you will not think. You cannot sing if someone else has to drum the notes into you. You cannot succeed in anything by merely going through the motions. These papers show more interest in form than substance. Almost every one is just over the minimum length.” I gave a sardonic bow.
“Mister Gersten, how would you characterize the impact of unrealized external diseconomies upon the environment of New Bruges in the 1920s?”
Gersten turned white. I waited. It was going to be a long class and a longer term.
After terrorizing the students in my eleven o’clock, I announced that they would have no class until the following Monday, but that they had better have caught up on the reading by the time I saw them again.
I skipped lunch and made up another short test for the eleven o’clock—a nice present for them for the next Monday, since most of them still wouldn’t believe me. After that, I went over my notes for Environmental Politics 2B, the follow-on course to my two o’clock that ran at two on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
David, of course, never did bother to stop in. Before I knew it, it was time to head down to the watch station, that gray stone building next to the post centre.
The chief was waiting in the lobby, or whatever they call the open space with a duty officer.
“Doktor Eschbach?”
“The same.”
I had never met Hans Waetjen, but he looked like his name. Solid and stocky, with graying hair, gray eyes, and a ruddy skin. He was clean-shaven, unlike most older Dutch-surnamed men.
“Pleased to meet you, Doktor Eschbach. Wish it was under other conditions.”
“I would guess these things do happen, not that I’ve seen one in Vanderbraak Centre.” I tried not to wrinkle my nose. The watch station smelled like disinfectant.
“I’d guess you probably saw lots of strange things in government, but you’re right. We sure don’t see this sort of thing here. Must have been a good three, four years since the Adams case. Happened before you came back. Boy took an axe to his old man. Old man probably deserved it—he’d been beating both children. Still, a terrible thing it was.” Waetjen shook his head and gestured toward the small office in the corner. “Coffee? Chocolate?”
“Chocolate would be fine.”
A young watch officer carried two cups toward the urns on the table in the main corridor. Waetjen walked through the open door to his office and sank into the scarred gray leather chair behind the desk, not waiting for me to sit, but I did without invitation.
The younger watch officer delivered the cups, setting them both on the desk. He closed the office door on his way out, and it clunked shut with the finality of a cell door.
The chocolate was hot, and sweeter than even I liked it. Waetjen had coffee, so bitter I could smell it across the desk, mingling with the sweet-acrid odor of disinfectant.
“Just had a few questions I wanted to ask you, Doktor.” Waetjen’s eyes ran over me. “Fine suit you got there.”
I smiled. “Just a leftover from my days in the big city.”
“Don’t see those that much here. You must have been an important man in government, Doktor.”
I shook my head. “I was so important that I doubt anyone at the university even knows what I did.”
“With all your traveling, I was wondering if you had ever met Professor Miller before you came here.”
“I’ve met a lot of people, Chief, and I could have seen her at a reception or something, but I know I never talked to her before I joined the faculty here.”
“I thought so, but I had to ask. What about any of the others that were at the concert? Do you know if any of them knew Professor Miller before they came to the university?”
“Not that I know of. She was here for a long time, according to some of the old-timers.”
“What about Doktor duBoise? When did you first meet her?”
“I’d say it was six months after I started teaching.”
“You didn’t know her before that?”
“No. It was even an accident when I met her. She’s in Music and Theatre, and I’m in Natural Resources.”
“What do you know about Professor Martin?”
“Not much. I have talked to him once or twice. He seems very straightforward.”
“Do you think any student could have been involved?”
“That’s always a possibility, but it would probably have to be one of Professor Miller’s students, and I wouldn’t know one of them if they bumped right into me.”
“How did the administrators regard Professor Miller?”
“I don’t know. I was led to understand that she and Dean Er Recchus got along fairly well, and they certainly were friendly at the new faculty gatherings where I saw them.”
Because he was stalling to keep me around, I finally looked directly at Chief Waetjen and kept staring at him. “I’ve answered your questions. What can you tell me about what you’ve found out?”
“I can’t really say much.”
“I know that. Let’s try off the record, Chief.”
He took a deep breath. I waited.
“The time of death was right around quarter to eight. We know that because of the subsonics you heard, and because Doktor Geoffries found the body just before eight. Both Frau Vonderhaus and Fraulein Matthews saw Doktor Miller at seven before Frau Vonderhaus went to check the tuning on the Steinbach.” Hans Waetjen spread his hands before continuing.
“So where was everyone? You were in your office, and three people saw you on the way to and from there. Doktor duBoise and Frau Vonderhaus were on stage practicing. Doktor Geoffries and the box-office manager were together. Gregor Martin was in the lighting booth replacing the gel in one spotlight, and the back-stage crew has insisted that no one went down the corridor to Doktor Miller’s studio.”

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