Ghosts of Columbia (22 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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“The luck I do not need. I need more time.” She flashed a quick smile, and left me, as usual, to pay the check, which Victor presented quickly.
Then, wondering if I would find any surprises, I walked down to the post centre, my overcoat half open because it was too cold not to wear a coat and too warm to bundle up. I was resisting wearing a hat, except to church—when I went, which hadn’t been that often lately.
“No bills for ye, Doktor,” called Maurice from behind the window.
“And you’ll take all the credit?”
“You give me all the blame.”
Two advertising circulars, a reminder card from the dentist, and a single brown envelope posted in the Federal District which I did not open but thrust into my folder—those were the contents of my box.
When I got back to my office, I did open the envelope, which contained one clipping. It was the same story I had already seen in the
Asten Post-Courier
that morning, except that it had come from the
New Amsterdam Post,
and that almost certainly meant that vanBecton had planted the first story.
After gathering up yet another short test and the greenbooks for my two o’clock, I trudged through the cold wind to Smythe Hall. I had to grin as I stepped into the room just a minute before the clock chimed the hour. Every seat was filled. Clearly, the word had gotten out about my policy on missing tests, unannounced or otherwise.
“Miss Deventer, are you ready today to discuss the political basis behind the first Speaker Roosevelt’s efforts at reforestation?”
Miss Deventer swallowed. So did several others.
“I meant it, you know.” I grinned. That was one of the questions on the test, not that she had to choose that one, but the others were equally specific.
Once again I handed out greenbooks and tests, and repeated the litany about only responding to one of the essay questions. After collecting the tests fifteen minutes later, we launched into a discussion—except it was more of a lurch.
“Why did it take the federal government nearly two decades to begin enforcement of the Rivers and Harbors Act?” I pointed to Mister Reshauer.
“Uhhh …”
That brilliant answer was equaled only by Miss Desileta’s “I don’t know.”
Eventually we did have a discussion on the relationship of external diseconomies and regional political alliances to the delay in the development of the Columbian environmental ethic.
Still, by the time class was over, I had the definite feeling that an even higher percentage of the environmental politics class than the economics class was going to receive D’s.
After gathering my notes, the tests, and the greenbooks into my folder, I pulled on my overcoat and trudged back through the freezing mist to my office, nodding at Gilda while I pulled another of David’s memos from my box. This one dealt with something called graduate-level in-loading, and seemed to be an excuse for paying some faculty more for doing less. I carried everything upstairs and set out the two stacks of tests, starting to grade the morning’s environmental economics quizzes. The first five were D’s; then I finally got an honest C.
At three-twenty, I left the tests on my desk and took myself and my folder back outside and up the hill to the Physical Sciences building and Gerald’s office.
He opened the door within instants of my rapping. “I don’t like this, Johan.”
“Neither do I, but I felt you deserved to know the size of the sharks you’re fishing for.” After setting my unzipped leather folder on the corner of his desk, I leaned forward, scanning the few memos on it before pointing to a picture. “That your daughter? She’s an attractive young lady.”
As his eyes moved to the picture, I slipped a memo with Branston-Hay’s signature on it under my folder—it was only something about allocation of time on the super-speed difference engine, but the signature would do. Then I settled into the chair closest to his difference engine.
“Exactly what do you mean by all these veiled threats, Johan?” He sat in the big swivel, but only on the front edge, as if I were some form of dangerous animal. His hand brushed over his long, thin, blond and white hair, as if he were trying to recover his bald patch.
“I don’t make threats, Gerald. I’m just offering some observations.”
“Your ‘observations’ sound like threats to me.”
I leaned forward in the chair. “You know, Gerald, I wonder what your next project will be. This one is going to end rather shortly, you know?”
Branston-Hay frowned at me, as I knew he would. The one thing that defense contractors—even covert ones—never understand is that all projects end.
I stood and ambled over to his difference engine. “You keep your notes on this, don’t you, the ones no one else is supposed to read or know you keep?”
Even as he watched, his mouth dropping open, I sat down at the console and flipped the switches, watching as it powered up.
“Johan …” His voice was low and meant to be threatening. “No one would ever see you again if I said so.”
“Permit me a word, Gerald. First, I would assume that this office is thoroughly desnooped, and that you ensured that?”
“Of course. That technology I do know.”
“Good. Now what makes you think I would say what I just said without a reason?” I entered the sequence I needed, and tried not to grin. It just possibly might work.
“Reformulation beginning” scripted after the pointer.
I stood and walked from the console toward his desk, keeping my body between him and the screen. “I hope your desnooping was thorough. You know, your research is already being implemented.”
“They said—”
“Bother what they said. Have you noticed all the Babbage centers going up in flames? I wonder how many professors just had heart attacks, or highway accidents, or drowned in swimming or boating accidents? I’ll bet there are more than a few. And with all the religious fervor over psychic research, it’s going to be a dead end all of a sudden.”
“But Ferdinand would like to see it a dead end. He already has what he needs. So does Speaker Hartpence, and now it will be convenient for that
research to stop.” Branston-Hay looked smugly at me. “And then we’ll get a new contract.”
“That brings up something else. You never told the president’s people about the disassociator, did you? You were even too timid to build it, weren’t you?”
At that point the gun came out, a very small-bore Colt, wobbling enough that I knew he’d never even practiced with it.
I stepped aside so he could see the console screen. The gun wavered, and I moved and slashed it out of his hand, but he let it fall and lunged past me. “You … you bastard! But you don’t know …”
I had the gun, and it didn’t waver in my hand. “Sit down, Gerald. We’re going to talk.”
He looked at the gun, then at the dead screen of the difference engine, and wilted.
“Don’t look so depressed. You have backup disks somewhere, I’m sure, and most of what was on there you could probably replicate anyway. I’m just keeping you out of bigger trouble.”
“You’re getting in well over both our heads, Johan.” His voice was dull.
“We already are.” I cleared my throat, even though I wanted to be out of his office. “Now, let’s get the players straight. You had a research contract with the Defense Ministry, a fairly straight job to investigate some aspect of deghosting, probably using the magnetic basis of the electro-fluidic difference engine. That was the origin of your so-called filing protocol.”
His mouth opened, and he gulped like a carp.
“That contract is really over, but you didn’t want to close it out, because who else would pay you that much? Then the president’s crew came in with a special request, right?”
“You seem to have it figured, Johan. Why ask me?”
“I don’t have it all figured. What I can’t figure is why you killed Miranda Miller.”
“I didn’t! I had nothing to do with it.”
“Right.” I made my voice as sardonic as I could. “She’s an agent of New France pumping you for all you’ve got, and she finds out that you double-dealt the Defense Ministry—that the contract’s really done. You know, sooner or later, because she’s not very good, that the Spazi will find out. So you put her away.”
“With a knife? I could have—”
“Built your disassociator and turned her into a zombie? Or just put her under one of those helmets in the lab late some night and then carted her back to her cottage and left her?”
“Yes. So why are you baiting me? You know the answers.”
“You couldn’t leave Pandora’s box closed, could you, Gerald?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. All the military types wanted was a way to suck ghosts out of an area. You did it, all right, and you’re brilliant, Gerald. You saw what else was possible. So did the president’s people. Now, I don’t know how they got your reports, but I’ll bet a check would show you knew someone in the budget review shop—and Armstrong’s boys were on you in a flash. They threatened to show that you padded the contract, right?”
Branston-Hay looked blank
“You padded it, didn’t you? I can get the answer from the examiners, you know?”
He finally nodded.
“And then they asked what else you could do. You didn’t want to let the disassociator out. Even you could see the problems there. So you came up with the replicator and rejiggered your psychic scoop into a filing mechanism. And that’s how the president keeps outguessing the Speaker. He has a data bank of tame ghosts.”
“Who are you working for, Johan? Ralston will kill you if he finds out what you’re doing.”
I ignored the question and the threat. Any answer would be wrong. “If I were you, Gerald, I’d stick very close to your family and take a vacation, a sabbatical, anything.”
Walking over to his desk, even as he stood there, I opened the top left drawer and pulled out sheets of Babbage Center, Vanderbraak State University letterhead. “You won’t need these, and I do.”
“But … why … what are you doing?”
“Trying to keep us both from getting killed.” I put the sheets of letterhead and the memo I had slipped under my folder into the folder. Then I took out my handkerchief and wiped off the Colt, setting it on the chair farthest from where he paced behind his desk. I dampened the handkerchief in his water glass, then wiped off the Babbage console keys and the arm of the chair, fairly certain I hadn’t touched anything else.
After picking up my folder and walking to the door, I used the handkerchief to turn the knob. He didn’t stop me, just looked, almost dazed.
I forced myself to walk slowly out of the building and straight down the steps to the green, and then to my office. The wind had picked up so much that it blew the white steam of my breath away.
I skidded slightly on the bottom steps leading into the Natural Resources building, where a patch of ice remained, looking like someone had spilled something. Certainly the methodical Gertrude and Hector wouldn’t have left anything on the bricks. Overhead, the glow strips were glowing as the day faded.
I unlocked the door and stopped by the main office to check my box, but nothing had been added. I looked out the window uphill and watched as Gerald hurried down to his old black Ford steamer, carting two data cases.
Poor bastard. Then I straightened. If I didn’t keep moving, I knew who would be the next poor bastard. So I went upstairs to my office and looked at my desk and the mostly ungraded tests lying there.
I left them on the desk. Maybe I’d get back to them, and maybe I wouldn’t, but I had more than a few things to do first. I slipped some blank second pages of university letterhead into my folder and headed back out to the Stanley, relieved in a way that Llysette was tied up with rehearsals for most of the week.
When I got home, I unloaded Bruce’s latest creations from the Stanley before driving it into the car barn.
Marie—I blessed her industrious Dutch heart once more and added ten dollars to the check I set out for her—had left a chicken pot pie in the oven, and it was still warm. That and the crusty bread were almost enough to make me forget what I was going to attempt that night.
I also tried to forget the tests I hadn’t graded. But a little part of me nagged about them. I usually didn’t put off grading and returning things. After all, I was the one who believed in the efficacy of immediate feedback.
It seemed like I hadn’t eaten in days, although that was probably the result of nerves. Still, I ate almost all of the chicken pot pie and a good third of the loaf of bread. I had a bottle of Grolsch instead of wine, and I promised that I’d run harder and longer in the morning.
Then I went into the study and took Bruce’s latest gadgets from their boxes and assembled them. After that, I started in on the programming.
Some of it was relatively easy because I could use the first program I had already developed for ghost replications as a basis. I’d already decided to split the application into a basic system and a separate “personality creation” configuration.

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