Authors: L.E. Modesitt Jr.

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

Ghosts of Columbia (14 page)

BOOK: Ghosts of Columbia

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“That almost sounds like someone was hiding there or waiting there,” I ventured.

“A prop knife was apparently used, and the knife was wiped clean on the coat. The only blood was Doktor Miller’s.”

I nodded. Not exactly a locked-room mystery, but close. No obvious reason for Miranda’s murder and no obvious suspects. No job problems. No romantic ties. No hard evidence. Strange—you pass pleasantries with someone, and suddenly she is dead, and you realize how much you didn’t know.

“So who do you suspect, Doktor Eschbach?”

I had to shrug. “Something isn’t quite right, but right now I couldn’t tell you what it is.” Everything I said was perfectly true, unfortunately, since I don’t like to lie. I have been known to resort to untruths, generally in desperation, which is where it gets you in the most trouble.

“And you suspect?” he pressed.

“Right now, I suspect everyone, probably, except for Professor Martin, but even that, I couldn’t tell you why. And I could be wrong.”

Chief Waetjen nodded again.

“If you haven’t any more questions, I do have a two o’clock, and not much time to get there.”

“Of course.” He stood. “I do appreciate your coming in.”

“Any time.” I bowed and left.

Why had the chief asked me down? It wasn’t to tell me what the watch had discovered. So I watched as I left, and, sure enough, there was a young fellow with a portable videolink waiting outside. His presence confirmed that vanBecton was telling the chief what to do—and that I was bait to bring down Ralston and the president, one way or another. How many other lines had he set? Did it matter?

“Doktor Eschbach, do you have any comment?”

“On what?” I asked, letting a puzzled expression, I hoped, cross my face.

“On the murder.”

“I hope the watch is successful in apprehending the guilty party.”

“Why were you here?”

“While I would suggest you talk to Chief Waetjen, my understanding was that the chief hoped I could provide some additional information.”

“Did you?”

I smiled politely. “That’s something for the watch to release. As I said, I am confident that they will find the guilty party.”

The journalist backed away, looking puzzled. I tried not to smile more than politely as I walked back up to my office. Score one for Johan in the positioning war. Of course, vanBecton had scored a lot more. I felt like I was stuck trying to mark a seven-foot giant in korfball, and vanBecton was that giant and almost scoring at will.

The two o‘clock class on Environmental Politics was almost worse than the meeting with the watch chief, and not because of the short rainstorm I encountered on the way across the green. Even more of my students had failed than in my eleven o’clock, and none of them seemed to understand. I repeated my sermon, and they still looked blank.

“Miss Deventer, what was the political basis behind the first Speaker Roosevelt’s efforts at reforestation?”

Miss Deventer paled. Students looked from one to the other.

“Come now. It was in the assigned reading. Surely you have not forgotten so quickly. Mister Vanderwaal?”

“Uhhh, Doktor Eschbach, I didn’t get that far.”

“It was on the second page. Mister Henstaal?”

, I finally dismissed them, early, went back to my office, and drafted another short test for the next Monday.

Because I had yet to pack or handle any of the details for leaving, I closed up the office and stuffed the draft of the test in my folder, along with the post and my mother’s letter, and made my way to the car park.

Again, Llysette’s Reo was left forlornly by itself, and I shook my head at the hours she and the other music people put in.

Marie must have figured that I was working late, because she had left on the side porch light and one light in the kitchen. The lights made driving up to the house more welcoming, and so did the odor of the stew and the crusty fresh bread she had left. I just hoped her husband got the same sort of food. If he did, he was a lucky man.

After I ate, I reclaimed Bruce’s work from the steamer and carted all three boxes into the study. I set the two disassociators aside for the time being. Then I turned on the difference engine and called up the specifications for the filing gadget. Although I didn’t yet have the perturbation replicator, I might as well figure out how the storage system worked. If I understood the system right, what the perturbation replicator did was capture a pattern that the field storage system converted into an electronic file. If …

If that were the case, Branston-Hay’s notes and the president’s dinners with individual members of Congress made way too much sense.

I connected Bruce’s gadget, the external field/formatting device, to one of the external ports of my difference engine. Then I began to see what I could do to devise the program to make it work. My machine language commands probably weren’t suited exactly to use the full capability of the device, even given Branston-Hay’s notes and specs as a starting point, but it was worth a try.

A try it might have been worth, but when I stopped and brewed a cup of chocolate at half past ten I was still twiddling with the program and restudying Branston-Hay’s cryptic notes, as well as the structure of his own files, looking for some more insights. One file appeared to contain the entire structure, almost a template, but there were enough parameters that trying even to plug in values was extraordinarily time-consuming.

While the chocolate brewed, I went upstairs and packed a hanging bag, basically with evening clothes for the dinner and another suit to wear back, but also some extra shirts, socks, and underwear, since I was thinking of coming back the long way, via Schenectady.

After packing I went down and sipped the chocolate at the kitchen table, munching a biscuit or two, still thinking about the proto-program. The file format I didn’t have to worry about. Branston-Hay actually had those specs in his files; and so were the field capture parameters, though I didn’t yet have that hardware. All I was working on was the transfer section, almost a translation section.

Finally I went back to the difference engine, and back to the files I had stolen and duplicated. I decided to look at the encryption protocol—after all, it was a translation system of sorts. One thing led to another, and it was past midnight when I installed the completed program.

A flicker of white caught the corner of my eye. Carolynne hovered in the darkest corner of the study, where the full-length bookshelves met. I pursed my lips. Why had she appeared now? Was it just because it was around midnight? Supposedly midnight had no special significance for ghosts.

Shrugging, I turned to the difference engine again, then looked up as Carolynne seemed to drift from the shelves toward me. She seemed to be resisting a current, almost swimming against an invisible river.

“No more of that, my lord … no more!” she protested.

I looked around the study. “No more of what?”

“The Thane of Fife …” She tried to pull away from me, but it wasn’t me, exactly.

I snapped the switch on the difference engine. Something else might have worked as well, but usually the off switch is safest.

Carolynne curtsied and vanished.

I frowned and sat at the blank screen for a time. True, Carolynne never seemed to be around when I worked on the machine. What was it about the machine? Or had it been the new device? What was it about the device?

Not knowing why, exactly, just following a hunch, I went to the breaker closet off the kitchen and threw the master switch. Then I trundled outside, flash in hand, to the NBEI electric meter.

I had turned off everything, but the current meter wheel still turned. Even after I switched off the breakers, the meter turned—slowly but perceptibly.

Why?

I walked back to the veranda. Carolynne stood there, insofar as any ghost could be determined to stand.

“Will you tell me? Why are you still here? All ghosts fade—except those on magnetic fields. There must be a field here—somehow. I will tear up the house if I have to, but you could help.”

Carolynne drifted into the main parlor. She just went through the wall, or maybe she vanished outside and reappeared inside, but I had to go around to the side door into the kitchen, since I’d never unlocked the veranda door when I came home. Then I had to go back when I remembered I had left the flash in the study. Carolynne waited in the main parlor, but she still had not spoken, as if speech were unnecessary.

I watched as she floated behind the heavy love seat and a slender ectoplasmic hand pointed to a circular floral boss on one side of the mirror and then the one above it.

I touched the boss to which Carolynne had pointed, and the mirror—that
mirror I had believed mounted in the wall itself, with its back to the veranda—that mirror swung out on heavy hinges. I shone the flash into the darkness. Concealed behind the mirror was an enormous artificial lodestone, with old-fashioned copper wires wound around it in coil after coil.

“Who?” I asked, reclosing the mirror cover on the lodestone.

She seemed to shiver, as if crying, but I hadn’t thought about it. Why wouldn’t a fully sentient ghost cry?

“Was it the deacon?”

She seemed to pause, then shook her head. Even as I frowned, the story came back to me. After the deacon’s wife had stabbed Carolynne, he had taken the knife and killed his wife. The next morning he had walked the entire way to Vanderbraak Centre and confessed. He had never returned to the house.

“But he couldn’t have built this.”

“Boldness comes …” Her voice was faint. “Like Troilus, he gathered what he did. Your father, great king Priam, the lodestone was his and hid.”

“My father built this?”

“… conclude that minds swayed by eyes are full of turpitude …”

I sat down on the sofa in the darkness. My father—he had built the artificial lodestone. “You were fading, and he built this?”

I got the impression of a head shake, but she said nothing.

“But why?”

“But with my heart the other eye doth see …”

“In a way, he was in love with you?” I asked.

“One cannot speak a word.”

I sat in the sofa, looking at Carolynne, shaking my head. “Why?”

“Ah, poor our sex!”

“Did you give him a reason?”

“The error of our eye directs our mind.”

“But why?”

“It is no matter … but now, you have it, you have me in your sight …”

“But,” I began again, “how does that have anything to do with the lodestone?”

I only got a shrug, but a number of things began to make a crazy kind of sense. Mother had never been happy about Carolynne, but she had tried to keep her away from me, not from my father.

“Did my mother know about this?”

I got the sense of a head shake in the dark, but Mother had known.

I sat there in the darkness for a long time, accompanied by an equally silent ghost, until I finally got up and switched on the breakers and reset the electric clocks.

Again, I had trouble getting to sleep.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

W
hen I carted my traveling bag off the Columbia Special and out of the old Baltimore and Potomac Station—far classier than the shabbier, if newer, Union Station—I had to wait for a cab. That figured. Congress was in session, working on the trade and finance bills, and all the Dutch bankers from New Amsterdam had descended on Columbia City. Portly as most were, each required an individual cab. So I walked out to Constitution Avenue and down toward the galleries, hailing a beat-up blue steamer bearing the legend “Francois’s Cabs—French spoken.”

“Ministère des Resources Naturels, rue Sixième.”
I wondered if the driver actually spoke French.

“Oui, monsieur. Voulez-vous la porte este?”

“Non. Dehors la porte norde.”

“Ah …”

I also wondered about the knowing “ah,” but, French or not, the driver took me the back way, passing the B&P station again before turning north and back west. She muttered under her breath in French. As we waited at Eighth and D, I found myself looking at a small sign.

VLADIMIR NOBOKOV-JONES
SPECIALIST IN PERSONALITY UNIFICATION

What a scam. Only a small number of people ever suffered a personality fracture without physical trauma—and that was usually from extraordinary stress and guilt. They’d said I’d come close after Elspeth’s death, but not many people go through years like that. So any quack could hang up a shingle and declare himself a specialist in personality unity, since so few ever suffered the problem—and if they did, how could they complain?

The next block held the big Woodward and Vandervaal, the downtown flagship store. The windows were filled with braided corn shucks and other harvest items, such as a scarecrow decked out in a brand-new New Ostend plaid shirt and leather knickers. I was grinning at the incongruity when a white figure darted in front of the cab.

Screee
… The cab skidded for a moment. The driver released the brakes as the figure vanished the moment the steel of the bumper touched her white coat.

“Revenante! J’oublie …”

The driver went on in French, as well as I could follow, about how the ghost, a woman originally from Spain, had run in front of a full steam-bus the week before.

“…
elle croit qu’elle n’etait point la personne seule qui perdait tous!”

Did each person believe that he was the only one who suffered? Or was that a French ailment? I had seen that in Llysette, but wouldn’t I have felt the same way? Didn’t Carolynne, disembodied and sometimes disconnected ghost that she was, show that as well? I was still reflecting when the cab stopped at the Sixteenth Street entrance to the Natural Resources Ministry.

“Voilà!”
The cab driver’s words were flat, despite the French.

I handed her two dollars and a silver half dollar.

“Merci.”
The “thank you” was equally flat, as if she deserved a greater tip for speaking French, and she pulled away as quickly as any steamer could, but without the screeching tires possible with an internal combustion engine. Were the screeching tires why so many young Columbians sought out the older petrol-fired cars and restored them?

After proffering the identification card to the guard at the Natural Resources building, I left my bag in the locker behind his desk. Of course, I’d had to show him it contained only clothes, but all guards are much happier when strangers don’t carry large objects into federal buildings. Then I headed down through the building to the basement, and then to the subbasement and the tunnel guard.

“This tunnel is not open for normal travel.”

“Doktor Eschbach for Subminister vanBecton.”

I waited for him to pick up the headset. He just looked at me.

I smiled, and the young face looked blank. I could tell it was going to be a long day. “I really do suggest that you pick up that handset and get me cleared into Billy vanBecton’s office.”

“Billy? I don’t know who you are, but you don’t belong here.”

“I believe I do.” I nodded politely. “I’m here to see Minister vanBecton.”

“No, you aren’t. I know his people.”

Because I hate wise-asses, I reached down and picked up the handset, hoping that the sentry wouldn’t get too upset. I dialed in the numbers.

“Minister vanBecton’s office.”

“This is Doktor Eschbach. I’m in the tunnel, and the guard seems to want to keep me from my four o’clock appointment with the minister.”

“That’s station six, is it not? The one from Natural Resources?”

“Yes.”

“Put the handset down. We’ll call back.”

“Thank you.”

I put the handset down and looked into the muzzle of the guard’s handgun.

“I could blast you for that,” he said.

“Not if you want to keep your job.”

The wireset bleeped.

“Station six.”

I watched as the sentry turned pale. “But … he didn’t … but … yes, sir. Yes, sir. At five, sir. Yes, sir.”

He looked at me, and if his eyes had been knives, I would have been hamburger. “You’re cleared, sir.”

I opened the leather folder for him to see and caught his eyes. “It’s a cheap lesson, son. Don’t ever make threats. And don’t ever stand in front of someone older and wiser unless you intend to kill them and pay for it yourself.” Facing him down was a risk I shouldn’t have taken, but I was getting tired of the games.

“How many …”

“More than you want to know, son. We old goats are more dangerous than we look.” I sighed and walked past him into the tunnel that led into the subbasement of the Spazi building. The guard there waved me on into the growing smell of disinfectant.

VanBecton’s office was on the fourth floor. I walked up, still holding to my resolve to improve my conditioning. I don’t think I panted as much as the time a week earlier, but I still stopped a moment on the last landing to catch my breath. The landings were empty, as always. It’s against the English ethic to appear to work, and against the Dutch to engage in unnecessary work when there is so much that is necessary.

The pinch-faced clerk gave me a grin, an actual grin, as I walked into vanBecton’s outer office. “Thank you, Doktor.”

“Glad to be of service.”

“The minister has not been happy with some of the guards, but most reports have been too late for him to act.”

In short, Gillaume vanBecton had been taking it out on his staff, and the clerk was more than pleased that someone else was on the firing line.

“You can go right in.”

I smiled at the clerk, then opened the steel-lined wooden door, closing it behind me as I stepped toward the desk and vanBecton.

“Johan. Already you’re making your presence felt, just like in the old days, I understand.” VanBecton offered his broad and phony smile, stepping around the wide desk.

“I doubt that. Your guard wants to kill me, and that’s not exactly the impression I’d rather leave. I am afraid my patience has been eroded by age.”

“Do have a seat.” He sat in one of the chairs in front of the desk, a gesture clearly designed to imply we were dealing as equals.

“Thank you.” I sat. “I thought I should stop by, since I was invited to swell the President’s guest list at the last moment. I take it that a number of the regulars decided to decline the invitation after the Japanese announcement?”

“There were a few.” VanBecton covered his mouth with a carefully manicured hand and coughed. “Have you had any interesting developments in your area?”

“Not really interesting. You have discovered, I presume, that Professor Miller’s older son was arrested on trumped-up charges by the New French.”

“We knew of the charges.”

“His personality makes it highly unlikely that he would ever even skirt the law. That’s what the family feels.”

“How would that fit with Professor Miller’s death?”

“The only thing I can think of is that someone else knew she was working for Maurice-Huizenga. Perhaps she knew too much.”

“Oh?”

I shrugged. “Knowing who I was wouldn’t be enough. A retired Spazi employee? Come now.”

“That puts a different light on Doktor duBoise.”

“Why?” I asked, trying to look puzzled.

“Now, Johan. She must be working for Takaynishu. Who else could it be? You have pointed out how unlikely it is that she would be in the pay of the Austro-Hungarians, and with Professor Miller reporting to Maurice-Huizenga . . who else could it be?”

“You assume that she works for someone. What about some proof?”

“We have some transcripts of wireline conversations.”

“Whose?”

“You are good, aren’t you?”

“No. But I’ve played the game for a long time. Whose conversations?”

“The Miller operation was quite professional. She always received calls. She never made them.”

“Sitting duck, and that sounds like the New French.”

“The transmissions were always illegal—that is, someone tapped a line not far from the New French border—and the caller always said, ‘Rick is all right.’”

“And what did the good professor say?”

“Many things, not all relevant to the point I raised. You understand, I know. She did say that—” he looked back toward his desk “—‘Doktor duBoise pursues them all, but spends by far the bulk of her energy and charm on Doktor Eschbach. If he but knew what held her soul, he would be far less interested. Ferdinand is not even that evil.’” VanBecton smiled. “Unfortunately, Professor Miller was rather poetic; so it is hard to prove some things literally. I imagine that it must have given Maurice-Huizenga fits, but he was playing out of his depth.”

“Yes, he was.” I frowned. “You believe that such vague words mean that Doktor duBoise had to be working for the Japanese?”

“Was it not strange that she was released through the intervention of the Japanese ambassador?”

“Why? They do have a reputation for liking occidental music.”

“And occidental singers.”

“Bill,” I said flatly, “you don’t seem to know much more than I do. It’s all speculation. You have transcripts of conversations by Professor Miller. You have her son held by the New French, but you haven’t got a thing on anyone else—except me.”

“I didn’t quite say that.”

I smiled easily, hard as it was, before I lobbed the next one into his lap. “The only other thing I can add is that Miranda Miller also spent a great deal of time, a very great deal, discussing things with Doktor Branston-Hay, the Babbage man.”

His eyes flickered, but so minutely that I wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t been waiting. “That is rather odd.”

“Not at all. You certainly have read the papers. Something strange is going on in a lot of university Babbage centers. The New French could well be behind it, couldn’t they?”

“It’s more likely the religious fundamentalists, Johan. You’ve been in the business too long. Despite our concerns, we know there’s not a conspiracy behind every tree.” He laughed. “Every other one, perhaps.”

“You know best.” I stood. “That’s all I know right now.” All that I was telling, in any case.

“You mean that’s all you’re telling,” corrected vanBecton.

I grinned. “Unlike some, I can’t afford to deal in pure speculation, but I will keep working on it.” I backed up, stumbled, caught the back of my knees on the edge of the chair, and knocked it against the low table, while almost sprawling across the desk before hitting the carpet. I lay there for a moment before taking a deep breath. As I pulled myself erect, I looked at a red splotch on my palm, then restacked the papers I had disarranged. “I’m getting too old for this.”

“Just leave the papers, Johan. They’re all administrative trivia.”

“I’m certain they are, Minister vanBecton. Little of import is reduced to ink. That’s one reason I avoid speculation.”

“Good. Perhaps we’ll see you again before too long.”

“That’s definitely a possibility.”

VanBecton nodded and watched as I took the back exit.

After reclaiming my hanging bag from the guard in the Natural Resources building—the tunnel guard had looked the other way as I passed, although I felt his eyes on my back—I went out into the sunlight and looked for a cab. That took a while, but finally a patched Stanley with mottled gray and blue paint stopped.

“Spring Valley, Forty-seventh and New Bruges.”

“That’s a minimum of four.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Don’t worry about it? I got to worry about it. It’s my living.”

I set a five on the dashboard. “All right?”

“You got the money, I drive.”

BOOK: Ghosts of Columbia

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