Read Ghosts of Columbia Online
Authors: L.E. Modesitt Jr.
Tags: #Science Fiction, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Alternate History, #United States, #Literature & Fiction
Ghosts of Columbia (20 page)
How could she not? I knew I would, were I locked into some place where I was bodiless and could only talk to a handful of souls across a century. But could she talk, or was I imagining it?
I shivered.
“You are cold, Johan?”
“A little chill.”
“You who are always so hot?”
“It happens.” My eyes flicked to the window. “It’s beginning to snow.”
“That is what the videolink forecast.”
“You actually watch the video?”
“Sometimes. It is … amusing.”
“Terrifying is more like it.”
“Johan, sometimes … there is very little difference between terror and amusement.” Her lips reached mine again, and they were warm, which was good because I was chilled all the way through to my soul.
I
cannot believe you are going to sing for the Anglican-Baptists. Especially for just ten dollars.” I swallowed the last of my chocolate. Since she was not singing at the Dutch Reformed Church, I wasn’t going to be particularly godly. In fact, I was going to work on the definitely ungodly business of psychic phenomena, and trust that Klaus Esterhoos didn’t find out. But then I doubted that he would have cared that much.
cannot believe you are going to sing for the Anglican-Baptists. Especially for just ten dollars.” I swallowed the last of my chocolate. Since she was not singing at the Dutch Reformed Church, I wasn’t going to be particularly godly. In fact, I was going to work on the definitely ungodly business of psychic phenomena, and trust that Klaus Esterhoos didn’t find out. But then I doubted that he would have cared that much.
“It is a comedown, no? But what am I supposed to do? Starve?” Llysette shrugged before picking up her coffee cup.
I tried not to shudder. Either chocolate or tea—those I could take for breakfast. But coffee? I ground it fresh for Llysette, and fresh-ground coffee smells wonderful. I love the smell; it’s the taste I abhor.
“You’re not exactly about to starve, even on your salary.”
“Johan, my recital gowns, once they cost more than I make in a month here.”
I nodded, because Llysette does have exquisite taste, and fulfilling good taste never comes cheaply. I’d also priced recital gowns, and while university administrations expect performers to make a good impression, their pay scale always falls short of their expectations of performing artists.
Cost accounting, again—a business professor can teach eighty students in a class and ten in an intensive seminar. A singer or instrumentalist can teach only one pupil at a time effectively. So a three-credit business lecture course generates over ten thousand dollars and takes less than three hours of lecture time for the professor. He generates three thousand dollars per credit. Poor Llysette or poor dead Miranda spent three hours a week with a student, got two teaching credits, and generated only a hundred dollars.
It’s no wonder the performing arts have little administration or state funding support. Yet how can you develop the arts without education? I shook my head, but Llysette didn’t notice my distraction.
“New recital gowns I cannot buy, and I will not count every penny which crosses my palm.”
“How about silvers?”
“One does not have to count silvers.”
I refilled her empty coffee cup, and then poured the last from the chocolate pot into my cup.
Outside, the wind whispered past the kitchen window, blowing a few flakes of the light snow off the Reo.
“It’s still cold, but I suppose winter had to come sometime.”
“Winter? It is October until tomorrow, Johan. Christmas—it is two months away. Winter I am not prepared for. Your winters are too long, far too long.”
“Will you come back after you sing this morning?”
“Non. I cannot. Yesterday was ours. This afternoon and tonight I must prepare for the advanced diction class—my notes. It is another new class. And when I try to prepare here”—she smiled at me—“I do not prepare.”
“You know the material.”
“Knowing the material, that is one thing. Teaching it to these dunderheads is something else.”
I sighed. “I understand, but I don’t exactly like it, and I’m not rich enough to rescue you from such drudgery.”
“I did not ask you to rescue me, Johan.” Llysette stood. “I must get ready to perform my single solo for the Anglican-Baptists. And all for ten dollars.” She sniffed.
After I washed the dishes, I followed her upstairs.
By then she was applying makeup, not that I thought she really needed very much.
“Lunch tomorrow?”
“But of course. That is one of my joys.”
“What? Escaping the students?”
She raised her eyebrows. “How do you know I wish to escape all the students?”
“I forgot. You have some special baritones. Be careful, though. I’m a dangerous man … and a possessive one.”
“I know, and that is amusing.” She slipped out of the robe she left at the house and into the dark green dress, studying her reflection in the full-length mirror. “I look old.”
“No, you don’t.”
“If I know old I look, then old I look.” She straightened and lifted her cloak from where she had flung it on the bed. I’d have to make the bed after she left, but she got upset if I continually tidied up the place.
“But these … Anglican-Baptists, they will not see, and the money I need.”
“You look good enough to …” I kissed her cheek.
“That you have already.” She smiled, and we walked downstairs.
I took the broom and swept a path to the Reo and brushed the snow off. Then, after I watched her turn onto Deacon Lane, I wandered back into the kitchen and made another pot of chocolate. It was going to be a long day. Llysette had said it was amusing that I was possessive. Why? I shook my head, took a last look at the dark dual tracks in the snow on the drive, and closed the door. If I had thought the snow would stay, I would have gotten out the tractor and plowed the drive, but the six inches were already melting into slush.
When I went back into the study, I set my mug on the coaster on the corner of the Kunigser desk. Then I dragged out the two boxes with the LBI logo. I shook my head. Why I kept the toolbox in the car barn I still didn’t know, but that meant another trip through the whitecapped slush that wasn’t really snow.
Because Bruce built things that actually made sense, it almost took more time to get and return the toolbox than to physically install the perturbation replicator. Once again, the hardware was the easy part.
Trying to figure out the necessary programware was a mess, even cribbing liberally from Branston-Hay’s files and notes. All I really wanted was what I thought would be about a twenty-line program. It took me almost a hundred and fifty, and it looked more like one of the Brit programs I’d developed years ago.
The sun was setting behind Vanderbraak Centre before I finished the program. Whether it would work or not was another question, but I was very glad of the Brit assignment. I’d grumbled about learning Babbage code—Elspeth teased me about that to the end—but after investing the time, I’d kept up as well as I could with the latest developments. Not only had it kept me busy through some dark times, but it had proved useful—especially now.
After installing the program, I took a break and wandered into the kitchen, where I put on the kettle for tea. I needed some very strong tea. The odds were
that I’d fouled up somewhere, and I wasn’t up to facing the repair job until I was refreshed.
that I’d fouled up somewhere, and I wasn’t up to facing the repair job until I was refreshed.
While the kettle heated, I rummaged through the refrigerator and dug out some white cheddar. Then I cut two large slabs of oatmeal bread, just about finishing the loaf, and toasted them. Just to experiment, I used the Imperial Russian tea that Llysette had given me for my birthday, but didn’t let it steep too long as I saw how quickly the boiling water darkened around the tea caddy.
One sip of the tea told me why it was an imperial blend—it was strong enough even to knock over a czar, not that the fading remnants of the Romanovs would be that hard to unseat. I dosed my mug with raw sugar, lots of it, but even before I got through half a cup at the kitchen table my heart was racing. I slapped blackberry preserves on the bread, and both slabs helped calm me down. I was jittery still by the time I walked back into the study, lit only by the glow from the difference engine screen. I turned on the lamp on the desk.
I was right. The first time I tried to execute the program, the engine locked. It took an hour to track down that glitch, one symbol on line twelve. All in all, it was nearly ten o’clock before the system
seemed
to work.
seemed
to work.
I turned off the difference engine and went back into the kitchen to fix a late supper, not that there was that much left in the refrigerator. Outside, the wind was howling, and it seemed like it was cold enough to freeze the remaining slush and water on the drive. I turned on the light and peered out, nodding at the reflections on the patches of black ice.
Finally I made an omelet with cheese and some mushrooms and apple slices, and slathered it with sour cream mixed with curry powder. Sounds barbaric, like a relic from the days before the British got pounded out of India by the Muslim resurgence, but it was tasty.
Once refreshed, I returned to the fray, except I couldn’t do much without a ghost. So I turned down the lights and left the difference engine off.
“Carolynne? Carolynne?”
There wasn’t any answer, or response, and not much that I could do. So I looked through the shelves for something halfway interesting to read and pulled out something I hadn’t seen before—
The Green Secession,
one of those alternate-worlds fantasies. In this one there weren’t any ghosts, apparently, and Columbia was called something like the United States of America.
The Green Secession,
one of those alternate-worlds fantasies. In this one there weren’t any ghosts, apparently, and Columbia was called something like the United States of America.
I turned on the reading light by the leather chair in front of the shelves. From what I could tell after the first twenty pages, the United States had a president, but he had almost as much power as the Speaker. They had a two-house Congress, with lords, except they were called senators, and a lot of representatives who didn’t seem much concerned with anything but reelection. Still … it was fascinating.
After perhaps forty pages I called, “Carolynne.” But she was nowhere to be seen.
I called her name at irregular intervals several more times. By half-past
midnight, I had almost finished my improbable novel about a Columbia, or United States, I guess, where status and power almost seemed to be separate.
midnight, I had almost finished my improbable novel about a Columbia, or United States, I guess, where status and power almost seemed to be separate.
At almost one o’clock, on the last page of the book, Carolynne appeared at my shoulder, still in her antique recital gown.
“More to know did never meddle with my thoughts.”
“Didn’t you hear me calling?” I turned off the reading light to see her more clearly.
She smiled coyly. “Your tale, sir, would cure deafness.”
I sighed.
“Nor can imagination form a shape, yet once was I a shape.”
I thought about that. For all her scrambled quotes, Carolynne was definitely a person, but had Miranda’s ghost been one? What had Branston-Hay’s trapping done to her? I shivered.
“Dead, what is there I shall die to want, nor desire to give?” She stopped speaking abruptly and drifted a few feet back from my shoulder and into the center of the study. “It would become me as well as it does you.”
“I wanted to know if you would help me.”
“I am a fool to weep at what I am glad of.” She eased toward me.
Although I could sense something like fear as she neared the silent difference engine, I added, “You wouldn’t have to get close. If you stay by the doorway, can you avoid being drawn to the difference engine here?”
“But this is trifling.” She paused. “And all the more it seeks to hide itself.”
“No, I’m not trying to hide anything,” I answered truthfully. “I want to test something. It is supposed to make a difference engine … picture, I guess would be the closest term. If you feel yourself being trapped or pulled, let me know, and I’ll turn it off like I did before.”
“You may deny me, but I’ll be your servant.”
“I’ll be more quick.” I set up the device so that it was focused on her, then turned on the difference engine. As it came up to speed, Carolynne seemed to flutter, but she hovered by the doorway.
As quickly as I could, I trained the replicator on her, and entered the command lines, one after the other. “Define” was the first, and the machine typed back, “Definition commencing,” then “Definition complete.” “Replicate” was followed by the response “replication commencing” and then by “replicated file complete.” “Structure file” came next, followed by the condensation and storage commands. When the screen indicated that the replicated file was stored, I exited the program and flipped the switch to turn off the difference engine.
Carolynne drifted closer. “Another, yet I do not know one of my sex, save from my glass.”
“The other one of you, Carolynne, is more like a painting, or a picture. It is a copy of how you are now, but you will change, and it won’t.”
“Rather like a dream than an assurance that my remembrance warrants.”
“Is all life a dream?” And I had to wonder. Were the words Carolynne spoke meaningful, or phrases for which I was inventing meanings? Was my mind threatened as well as my life?
“It is a hint that wrings mine eyes to it.”
“Do you ever rest?” Why was I asking questions to an incoherent ghost?
The ghost seemed to frown. “What should I do, I do not. Rest do I not tossed upon stones.”
Stones? Lodestones? Was modern technology actually perpetuating ghosts because of the electrical and magnetic fields it generated? In a strange way, it made sense. Modern technology allowed more people to live in better condition. Why not ghosts? Of course, the religious nuts would have hung me out to dry on that one, since they all believed that ghosts were some sort of divine creation and not natural phenomena.
“My other self, death’s second self?” asked Carolynne.
That was a good question, and one I couldn’t answer. “I don’t know. Somehow, it would be wrong to destroy the file, but it would also be wrong to release her here with you.”
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