Ghosts of Columbia (44 page)

Read Ghosts of Columbia Online

Authors: L.E. Modesitt Jr.

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

BOOK: Ghosts of Columbia
6.56Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
Llysette blushed again—more than I’d seen since I’d known her. Carolynne?
I eased the pasta into the big kettle and then brought out the 1982 Sebastopol, around its peak, I thought, and filled the glasses. “We can sit down.”
“A toast to your upcoming performances,” offered Bruce.
I lifted my glass, and, after a moment, so did Llysette.
“This is a beautiful old house,” Bruce said after taking a sip from the wine.
“We’ve made some changes, and there will be more.”
Llysette nodded emphatically, but she could have any changes she wanted except in the study.
“Don’t take away the atmosphere,” Bruce cautioned.
“That, we could not do.
Mais non
.”
I knew the word “we” referred to more than the two of us, but there was no reason to explain. Who would have understood?
I had to get the pasta and drain it before tossing everything together and serving it, with the rolls. “It’s simple.”
“He does nothing in the kitchen simple,” said Llysette.
“She sings nothing in the theatre simple,” I countered.
“I know enough to know that neither of you is simple in any way. Johan always said he was simple. He’s simple only in the fact that quiet waters are deep and dangerous.”
Llysette laughed softly.
“So is she,” I pointed out.
“Like I said … ,” offered Bruce ambiguously before taking a sip of the wine.
I offered the rolls to Llysette, then to Bruce, and then handed him the serving platter.
“How do you find New Bruges … and teaching?” asked Bruce. “Is it that much different?”
“New Bruges … it is colder than France, and the people, they keep more to themselves.” Llysette lifted her shoulders, then dropped them. “Teaching …”
“Is hard,” I finished the sentence.
“
Tres difficile, quelquefois
… the simplest of matters, and they look as though two heads I had. I cannot do my best if accompany them I must. Do they find an accompanist?
Mais non!
They whimper about how their funds are short and how their lives are hard.”
“I can see that you are less than impressed,” offered Bruce.
“Ferdinand’s prisons they have not experienced,” answered Llysette, pausing for a sip of the Sebastopol. “Work,
travail vrai,
they do not comprehend. To find an accompanist? Is that so difficult? To learn the notes?”
“Anything is hard if one doesn’t work at it,” Bruce suggested.
How well I knew that, and I nodded. Even in the simplest of books, if something
did not happen to be explained in two-syllable words, or less, or if they had to think, even in novels, I suspected, they were baffled and claiming that someone
had
to explain. Life never worked that way, I had found. So had Llysette.
“Mais oui
. But still they whimper.”
“Some always will,” I suggested. “But you have some good students.”
“Marlena … a joy she is … and Jamella … she studies so hard.” Llysette smiled faintly. “The good ones, they are few.”
“That’s true in anything.”
“Good pasta, Johan,” said Bruce. “After all these years, I finally get to sample your cooking.”
“Thank you. You will more,” I promised. “Even without agendas.”
The slightest trace of a frown creased his forehead before he asked, “Why did you decide to bless me this year?”
I shrugged, not willing to tell him that ghosts of joy and justice and mercy did have an effect. Those I had saddled myself with inadvertently were quietly making me a slightly better person. “It seemed like a good idea, even if you are wary of things that seem like good ideas.”
That got a laugh. For a time we ate silently. Outside, the cold wind whistled gently and one of the shutters rattled.
“There will be a time when someone needs a ghost … badly.” Bruce raised his glass of the 1982 Sebastopol, then took a healthy sip. “And I don’t want to be around when it happens.”
“You, why would you be around?” asked Llysette. “Ghosts, you have said you avoid them.”
“Avoid them. What ever gave you that idea? It couldn’t be that I never visited Johan until this venerable and ancient dwelling was no longer spectrally inhabited?” Bruce grinned.
Llysette and I smiled back and then at each other. What else could we do? After the fact, it was amusing, not that it had been at the time. Neither Llysette nor I had ever mentioned the details of poor Carolynne’s displacement to our own souls. How could we? How could we tell the world that she’d shot me, under a compulsion from Ferdinand’s selective soul-sifting technology? Or that I’d turned all my ghost-creation and de-destruction gadgets on her, except a leaded mirror had skewed everything and dumped the real ghost of Carolynne into Llysette’s halfshattered soul and a copy, as well as a ghost that was a caricature of justice and mercy, into mine?
All the world of New Bruges and particularly the enclave that was Vanderbraak Centre knew was that Johan Eschbach’s family home was no longer haunted, and a good thing it was, too, now that the black sheep had finally married the French soprano. She might be a foreigner, that Llysette duBoise, and it might have taken a bullet in his shoulder to drive out the family ghost, but he’d finally seen the light.
I almost laughed—it had been a lot more complicated than that, and Bruce
was right to worry about ghost creation. I still had the equipment he had created that had saddled me with a simplified version of both Carolynne and a ghost of justice. I was still coming to terms with those forms of possession, but at least it hadn’t gone the other way and left me a zombie.
“You two … in the Spazi … one could not believe it today,” offered Llysette.
“They make offers that are difficult to refuse,” Bruce pointed out wryly. “If one wishes to work in any high-level position later.”
“And how is that so different from Ferdinand?” she asked.
“Most
of the time,” Bruce answered, “the Spazi is content with a few years of your life, and they don’t tell you what to think, just what to do.”
“My life they have asked years of, also.”
“That’s past.” I hoped it was past. At least she could now perform anywhere in Columbia.
“To many years of rewarding song.” Bruce lifted his glass again.
That was something I definitely would drink to, and I lifted my glass as well. “To song and singer.” I reached under the table and squeezed Llysette’s thigh just above the knee.
That got me a shy and sidelong smile, and a sense of warmth.
A
fter my early wirecall to Harlaan Oakes with Llysette’s two songs, Wednesday found us in Asten, at the Federal building, and the less said the better about the parking in that convoluted city. The only place we ran into no lines was in the passport office itself.
It was almost as if they were expecting us. They even insisted that, as my spouse, Llysette receive a diplomatic passport—since they had issued one to me when I’d been Subminister for Environmental Protection … and let me keep it. Having matching passports with the heavy green covers and the gold stripes offered an additional touch of class on someone’s part. The fact that I didn’t know whose part twisted my guts more than a little.
We were happy to leave, and even the congested streets of Asten were a relief, despite the excess of dark black steamers that reminded me of the high-tech trupps that controlled the south side around the diminishing back bay.
I took a deep breath once we were clear of the verge-on-verge towns that clustered around Asten and once the Stanley settled into a high-speed glide on the relatively open highway north toward Lochmere.
“You’re not only a confirmed Columbian citizen, but you have a passport as well.”
“A diplomatic passport—and a year ago they could not find my residence forms.” Llysette provided a sound halfway between a snort and a sniff. “Why a diplomatic passport?”
Because that meant that Columbia could scream louder if anything happened to us and because it meant someone expected something to happen. “You are a cultural diplomat, of sorts.” My internal ghost of honesty and justice compelled me to add more. “And someone is worried that something might happen. I don’t know what.”
“My life I thought would be boring in New Bruges. It has not been so.”
“There are times I wish it were less exciting.” Then, I was beginning to realize that I was never going to escape my past—nor was Llysette.
“Johan?”
“Yes?”
“The zombie who died—was he sent to kill me?”
“I don’t know.” I eased the steamer around an empty hauler that trailed black smoke, half-wondering why the owner didn’t adjust the burners. “He had a gun, and he was told to kill us both. I’d think there are more reasons to kill me … but these days, I just don’t know.”
“A year ago, that you would not have said.”
“Said what?”
“You say … you have opened your heart more, and I love you for that.”
“So have you, and I have loved you longer than I ever let you know.” I laughed ruefully. “Matters would have been a lot easier if I had told you.”
“Non, je crois que non …
I would have heard the words. The meaning, it would have escaped.” Llysette’s hand caressed the back of my neck for a time, and I just drove and enjoyed the sensation, trying to forget about assassins, presidential receptions, and the ghost-related technology that was supposed to have been outlawed—and was still being employed.
“We won’t know,” I said later … after leaving two more haulers in the Stanley’s wake.
“What will we not know?”
“How things would have turned out.”
She laughed, and so did I. We talked the rest of the trip, enjoying just being together—until we drove up Deacon’s Lane and into our drive.
Constable Gerhardt was waiting, standing by a Watch steamer, a glum look on his face.
“I’m sorry, Herr Doktor.” His eyes went to the house, and he fingered one side of the sweeping mustache.
“Sorry?” I had to shake my head.
Llysette just frowned, her eyes going from Gerhardt to the house and back again.
“Frau Rijn was leaving after her cleaning, and she thought she saw an intruder from the lane. She wired from her house, but by the time we got here, he got away. Smashed the panes in the glass door in back good, he did. Since Frau Rijn said you’d be back this afternoon, the chief had me wait.”
“I hope you didn’t have to wait too long.”
“Less than an hour. Could I wire the chief that vou’re here?”
“Be my guest.” I unlocked the door and let Llysette and the constable enter before me.
The kitchen seemed untouched, the white windowsills clean and gleaming in the late-afternoon light, the floor dust-free, and the faint odor of a meat pie from the warmer filling the room.
“There.” I pointed to the wireset on the corner of the counter, the one I seldom used.
The constable dialed something. “Chief, they’re here.” Gerhardt waited, then said, “Yes, sir.” He hung up the handset and turned. “He’ll be right up. He asked that you not touch anything.”
“I assume we can look?”
“I think so, sir.”
“Upstairs, I will check.” Llysette scurried up the steps even before she finished speaking.
Gerhardt and I went out into the study. My desk was disarrayed, with the desk drawers pulled out. My custom-designed SII difference engine was on, but only to the directory.
“He ran out the back, we guessed—across the wall,” offered Gerhardt. “The Benjamin boy said there was a steamer on the back road there, but he didn’t see it very well. He said it was dark-colored.”
I walked around the study. Outside of the papers strewn across the Farsi carpet my grandfather had brought back from the Desert Wars and the switched-on difference engine, the room looked as it had when we had left.
The French door to the terrace had a large hole in the double panes next to the lock and glass fragments on the floor and on the stones of the terrace. Print powder lay dusted across the knob and the stones and bare wooden floor just inside the door before where the carpet began.
“Can I?”
“No prints,” Gerhardt said. “Not on the glass or knob.”
I pushed the door, already ajar, open and stepped onto the terrace, and into the light and cold wind.
The rear yard seemed unchanged—from the compost pile below the garden to the brown grass carpet. The frost-killed tan stalks of the raspberries remained erect, although that would change with the next heavy snow. The only remnant of raspberries until spring would be the frozen pies, freezer jam, and whole frozen berries, more than enough to last through until the next summer.
The second Watch steamer whistled into the drive, and the gray-haired chief piled out, barely pausing at the door long enough for me to open it.
“Doktor Eschbach, you present a problem.” Waetjen glared, and I suspected he still didn’t care much for me. “When you are here, people get killed and zombied, and when you are not, the same occurs, with thefts as well.”
I shrugged. This time, I had done nothing. I tried not to swallow. The last time, when Miranda had been murdered, I hadn’t done anything either. Was life trying to tell me that I could not continue being a turtle?
“Is there anything missing?”
“Not down here.” I turned to Llysette, who stood in the archway between the sitting room and the study.
“Nothing has moved … upstairs.” She finished with a gesture.
“Nothing?”
I eased around the chief and let everyone follow me to the study. I pointed toward the desk and the papers scattered across the green Farsi carpet. “I couldn’t say that they might have gotten some papers or loose coins or something like that, but there’s nothing obviously missing.”
“Doktor … would there be papers of value here that anyone would know about?” asked the chief.
“Most of the files on the difference engine deal with my writings or my lectures and class notes. I can’t imagine any value to anyone but me. I have records for taxes, but why would anyone else care?”
“No valuable manuscripts, anything like that?”
I nodded toward the bookcase. “There are some moderately valuable books there, but it would take a collector to know which.”
Waetjen surveyed the long wall of floor-to-ceiling cases. “Are they all there?”
My smile was half-apologetic, half-embarrassed. “I wouldn’t know for sure. None seem to be gone, but I couldn’t say if a single volume might not be missing.”
The square-faced chief touched his gray goatee. “Do you have cash or other valuables in the house?”
“Some of Llysette’s jewelry, a few books, some antiques, the silver, some crystal that couldn’t be replaced.” I tried to think. “The carpet here, the painting in the piano room. But they’re all still here.”
“You should thank Frau Rijn, then, Doktors. Apparently, we got here before anything of consequence was removed.”
“I think so,” I answered. “We’ll take a closer look to make sure. Did you find any idea who it might have been?”
“The intruder wore gloves, leather gloves. Midheight.” The chief shrugged. “Size forty-eight boot—that was in the mud on the far side of the field. Late-model Reo steamer, probably midnight gray.”
Constable Gerhardt shifted his weight and looked at Llysette, who boldly returned the look. Gerhardt blushed at being caught and glanced away.
“Let me know if you find anything gone—or added.” Chief Waetjen bowed to Llysette, then to me.
After the Watch officers left, I taped cardboard over the broken pane and cleaned up the glass. By then it was dark, and we straggled into the kitchen.
I was getting a good idea what someone was after—but it didn’t make sense unless there were two groups involved, because the theft effort came after the attempted de-ghosting/murder.
So … someone wanted us removed, but very indirectly, with no connection. That meant it couldn’t be the Spazi. Minister Jerome and his minions had ways to remove us without going to low-class thugs. That pointed toward an outside power—someone like the Austro-Hungarians, or the New French, or even Chung Kuo. Quebec could have brought in someone who could pass scrutiny in New Bruges, and Deseret wouldn’t go to all the trouble of inviting Llysette, not when such invitations had to be cleared by the Council of Twelve, and then killing her. The Japanese had helped get Llysette released from Ferdinand’s prisons and torture … and had never called in that favor—or tried.
Someone wanted to steal something I had—that meant they knew or suspected I had ghost-removal technology. That also had to be an outside power, because both the president’s office and the Spazi already had such equipment. That bothered me a great deal … because no one knew I had that technology, for sure. Jerome and his analysts might suspect—but there wasn’t any hard evidence, except in the compartment behind the mirror and in my insurance packages. The file protocols on the difference engine that could capture or create ghosts would have been meaningless, and they were hidden, and the intruder hadn’t tripped the counter. But Bruce could have gotten the file without tripping it; so the untripped counter meant only that no amateur had tried.
“How about a salad with the meat pie?”
“Bien
… .” Llysette sat at the kitchen table. “Johan? This is not the same as the zombie,
est-ce que?”
“Non,”
I admitted.
“Who are they? What do they want?” She paused.
I continued to shred lettuce into the salad bowl—romaine, not iceberg.
“The creating and destroying of ghosts—is that what they desire? Your knowledge about such?”
I set aside the lettuce and began to work on a cucumber. “I’m not sure. I think we’re seeing two different groups. The first wants us out of the way, and the second wants knowledge, but I’d thought it was more about de-ghosting.” The Spazi couldn’t have known about the ghost-creation gadgetry, nor could Ferdinand’s people. Still, the furor that I’d created before and the latest incident pointed out, again, how ghosts were a real phenomenon in our world, with an impact that couldn’t be ignored. Ghosts had certainly made a historical difference in our world—from those that had turned William the Unfortunate’s conquest of England from a triumph
to near-disaster to all those of women who had died in childbirth and thus prevented early remarriages and slowed the world birthrate.
“Ferdinand … could it be?”
“What do you think?”
“
Je ne sais pas …
the puppets of that devil Heisler. I know nothing, and they must know more than we do.”
I nodded. That was my feeling. Why would Ferdinand or his mad scientist Heisler bother? But who else would even care? The Spazi could have us imprisoned or eliminated with less fuss.
I set the salads on the table and retrieved the meat pie from the warmer. “It is a puzzle, and we aren’t going to solve it tonight, and it is time to eat. Wine?”
“S
’
il vous plaît.
…”
“That I can do.” I could manage wine, just not the spreading web of intrigue that seemed bound to snare us both.

Other books

Dragons Rising by Daniel Arenson
Interregnum by S. J. A. Turney
Bet Your Bones by Jeanne Matthews
Liar by Francine Pascal
The Yeare's Midnight by Ed O'Connor
Dread Journey by Dorothy B. Hughes