Ghosts of Columbia (9 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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Llysette glared at me. “Like saying the hog is sometimes not so neat, that is.”
While I wasn’t sure of the comparison—or the metaphor—I got the idea.
“What does Doktor Geoffries think?”
Llysette squared her shoulders, letting the blanket slip away. “He says that if there is any way to make the dean happy, it would be better. Better for him, I think.”
I nodded. “I wonder why they all bow and scrape.”
“Because they are men.”
“You’re saying I’m not?” I raised an eyebrow.
“Different you are.”
I decided not to pursue that line of inquiry further. “Excuse me. I need to finish working on dinner.”
“With you I will come.” So she dragged the blanket into the kitchen and sat at the table while I worked.
I sliced some of the fresh apples and set them aside in a pan to make fried apples—better than applesauce any day, and chunky, not pureed baby food. Then I dragged out the butter, some cinnamon and nutmeg, and the raw sugar.
“You cook well.”
“Experience helps.” So did growing up in a household without sisters and a mother who insisted that no man should be slave to helplessness and his stomach. That had worked fine for food, but not so well in other areas.
Beans from the lower garden, via the root cellar, with almonds from McArdles’, were the vegetable, and I’d mixed batter for some drop biscuits.
“Cooking I did little of,” she admitted.
“I know.”
“Johan!”
I grinned. “I’m not primarily interested in your cooking.”
“Men! No better are you than … than all the others.”
“In some things, I’m better.” I tried a leer, but she wasn’t looking. So I dug a pale cream linen cloth from the butler’s pantry, not that we’d ever had butlers, and spread it on the dining room table. I even used the bayberry candles and silver instead of stainless.
Then I dropped the biscuits into the oven, and fried up the apples. After the biscuits came out, and the apples went into the covered bone china dish, I dashed back down to the cellar for a bottle of Sebastopol. Somehow I got all the food on the table warm, and both wine glasses filled.
“In France, you would have been a chef, a great chef,” Llysette said after several bites and half of her wine.
“Mais non, point moi,”
I protested in bad French.
“If you did not speak, that is.”
“We all might be in less trouble if we did not speak, I sometimes think.”
“But life, it would be dull.”
“Dullness can be a virtue,” I reflected. Especially compared to the alternatives.
“At times.” She lifted her glass and drained the rest of the Sebastopol. “We have seen such times.”
I refilled her glass, and tried the apples, just crunchy enough to give my teeth some resistance, soft enough to eat easily, and cinnamon-tart-tangy enough to offset the richness of the stuffed pork. “Some biscuits? The honey is in the small pitcher there.”
“Thank you, Johan. Perhaps it is as well we do not eat together all the time. I could get fat.”
“I am.”
“
Non
. Solid you are, with all that running and exercise.” She took another healthy swallow.
“I need to get more exercise.”
“Of what kind?” She winked slowly at me.
“You are terrible.”
“
Non—
it is the wine. With the wine, I can say what I feel. Without, it is hard. The feelings, they hide.”
I decided against another slice of the pork, but did take some of the apples. “Some more apples?”
“Just a few.”
There wasn’t any dessert, not with the fried apples and the need for both of us to watch waistlines, but we had tea, taken in front of the restoked woodstove, after I had washed and Llysette had dried the dishes.
Outside, the wind continued to whistle.
“Here, one can almost forget the world.”
I glanced toward the blank videolink screen. “So long as one ignores the news.”
“Cynical you still pretend to be.”
“Cynical I will always be, I fear.” I sipped from the mug, letting the steam and scent circle my face, breathing the steam.
“
Non.
You are not cynical. You see the world as it is.”
“Perhaps. I try, but what we are colors what we see. Truth is in the eye of the beholder.” I laughed, more harshly than I meant. “That’s why I’m skeptical of those who say they have found the truth.”
Llysette nodded. “They are terrible.” She meant the word in its original meaning.
“I think I’d rather not dwell on truth tonight. How about beauty?”
Llysette yawned, but spoiled it with a grin.
I grinned back. “You’re ready for some sleep?”
“I did not mention sleep …”
“Fine. You head upstairs, and I’ll dump these in the kitchen.” I picked up the mugs.
She winked again.
By the time I took care of the dishes, damped the woodstove, turned off the lights, and got to my bedroom, her clothes were laid on the settee, and she was under the sheet and quilt.
“The sheets, they are cold.”
“I’ll see what I can do about that.”
She was right. The sheets were cold, even for me, but the contrast between their coolness and the silk of her skin made me want to wrap myself around her. I didn’t, instead just held her and enjoyed the moment. There were too many moments in the past I hadn’t enjoyed, and there might not be that many in the future. Involuntarily, I shivered.
“What do you think? Are you angry with me?”
“Heavens, no. I was just thinking.”
A gust of wind, moaning past the eaves, punctuated my words.
“Sometimes, too much we think.”
“It’s the kind of world we live in. How can you not think when there are murders, and you have to wonder why the Spazi show up in a university town?”
“You worry about the Spazi?”
“Yes,” I admitted.
“Are the Spazi like Ferdinand’s NeoCorps, Johan, dragging innocents from their beds?”
“All security police have their problems,” I reflected. “Even those with the best intentions.”
“Do you think the Spazi have good intentions?” She curled upside my arms and shivered, warm as her bare skin felt against me.
“They did once. Now, I am not so certain.”
“All of them are beasts.”
“At times,” I agreed. “It is a hard job, and it makes hard people.”
“Why do you say that?” Her lips turned toward mine, and I kissed them, gently, and for a long time. “Tell me,” she prompted.
I shifted my weight so that her body did not cut off all the circulation in my arm, and held her tightly, letting that satin skin warm me, taking in the fragrant scent of Llysette and perfume. Finally I rolled back, letting my head rest on the pillow, my eyes on the white plaster of the ceiling, not wanting to look into her eyes, not then. “The world gets harder every year, and people lie more. Ferdinand claimed he would not invade France, and he did. Now he says he will not turn the Spanish protectorate into part of the Empire, but how good is that promise? Marshall deGaulle claimed that New France would not annex Belize, or Honduras, but they did. Here in our country, take Miranda. All the people who were around claim they were innocent and saw nothing. But she is dead. To find the answer, the watch or the Spazi must distrust everyone. I find that cold and hard … and perhaps necessary.”
Llysette shivered in my arms, and I pulled the quilt over her bare shoulders. In time, she turned to me.
Later, even after she slept in my arms, I held her tightly, wondering how I could protect her when I doubted I could protect myself.
O
n Monday morning, I made it through my run and exercises, and fixed both of us breakfast by seven—not bad considering that we hadn’t gone to sleep all that early. While I ran, Llysette slept, or tried to. She still had the quilt pulled around her ears even after I had breakfast on the small table and the aroma of coffee filling the kitchen.
“Young woman,” I called up the stairs. “Your coffee is ready. So are your fruit, toast, and poached eggs.”
I thought I heard a muffled groan, and I called again. “Time to rise and shine, young lady.”
“Young I am not, not this morning, but coffee will I have.”
She clumped down the stairs, in slippers, and slouched into the chair on the other side of the small breakfast table, sipping the coffee and ignoring the food. I had hot chocolate, bad for my waistline, but I felt virtuous after my heavy exercise.
“What are you thinking?”
“Many things. The students, now they are getting sick, and they cough in my face. I tell them to get well and not bring their illnesses to me, but still they do. John Wustman, the pianist-coach, he will be here next week for master classes.” She shrugged tiredly. “Many students do not know their music, and now come the midterms, and after that, the opera. Then I must start the rehearsals for the Christmas gala, and that music they have never opened.” After sipping more coffee, she speared an orange slice, from probably one of the last oranges we would see for a’ while.
“They never think ahead.”
“Think … what is that?” She dipped her toast into the half-runny eggs.
I poured more coffee into her mug, and she smiled. “Thank you, Johan. It is nice not to fix the breakfast.”
I didn’t comment on the fact that I doubted she had breakfast if I didn’t fix it.
After we finished, Llysette took a shower while I scraped and washed the dishes. Then I raced upstairs and hopped into the shower while she struggled with her makeup.
I dropped Llysette by her house just before eight and headed back to town and Samaha’s for my paper. There was a space right outside Louie’s emporium, and I dashed in.
After nodding to Louie, I pulled out my Asten
Post-Courier
and left a dime, taking a quick glance at the headlines before even leaving Samaha’s. The Derkin box was empty; another day had passed without my learning who Mr. Derkin was.
The newspaper headline was bland enough: “NO COMPROMISE BETWEEN DIRIGIBLES AND JETS.” Since I could guess the content of the story, I folded the paper under my arm and walked through the blustery wind back to the Stanley.
Llysette’s steamer was not yet in the faculty car park, I noted as I parked the Stanley in a vacant space closest to the Music and Theatre building. With my folder in hand, I trudged to my office. Although the main office was open and Gilda’s coat was on the rack, I did not see her. There was a message from David, indicating that Tuesday’s departmental meeting would start at a quarter to four instead of four o’clock sharp.
I took it and made my way upstairs to my office. There I briefly checked the paper.
There was almost nothing new in the
Asten Post-Courier
, not about Babbage fires or political gambits, except for an editorial warning Speaker Hartpence to beware of sacrificing the long-held Columbian ideal of free trade to short-term political goals. With the usual Dutch diplomacy, it did not actually accuse the Speaker of political idiocy.
Then I looked over the master class schedule. Gregor Martin appeared to be free until ten. I picked up my leather folder and headed back out. Gilda waved, and I waved back.
Gertrude and Hector were mulching the flower beds beside the brick walk. As usual, Gertrude wore the unfailing smile and Hector the somber mien, but their hands were quick, and they worked unhesitatingly, taking care to ensure that the wind did not scatter the bark chips onto the bricks of the walk.
“Good day,” I said as I passed.
“Good day, sir,” chirped Gertrude, and I wondered what personality disorder had rendered her a de-ghosted zombie.
Gregor Martin’s office was in the side of the building away from the music wing, and probably only the same size as my office, for all that he was head of an entire area and I was only a subprofessor. His door was open, and he was pacing beside his desk as I rapped on the door frame.
“Yes.”
“Johan Eschbach, Natural Resources. We met after several productions last year. I’m also a friend of Llysette’s.” I extended my hand.
He ignored it. “What do you need, Johan?”
“Well, Gregor, I need to know whether a student absolutely has to take Introduction to Theatre before taking the Two-B course.”
“It’s a prerequisite.”
“Even for an arts school graduate?”
Surprisingly, Martin shrugged. “You know, I really don’t care. Most of them know nothing about theatre, not in the performing sense. You have a student who wants to try, I don’t care. I’m tired of protecting them from themselves.”
“Is this a bad time?” I took the chair by the desk, and he actually sat down. If Miranda Miller had been right, and all the new faculty had secrets too heavy to bear, what secret weighed down Gregor Martin?
“No worse than any other.” He picked up a black pencil and twisted it in his fingers.
“You came here from the Auraria Performing Arts School. I imagine it was a shock.”
“You imagine?”
“I came from the capital, good old Columbia itself, and found that most of the students knew very little about politics, and cared less. Why would it be any different in the theatre? Vanderbraak Centre isn’t exactly the great white way of New Amsterdam or the musical Valhalla of Philadelphia.”
“You’re right. But it’s worse in theatre. They all have this … this Dutch stolidity.” He set down the pencil and waved his hands, almost disconnectedly. “They can’t even imagine being something other than what they are. Theatre is the art of creating a different reality. How can you create a different reality when you can’t even imagine its possibility?”
“What is, is. Is that it?”
“More like what isn’t, isn’t—but it has to be for good theatre.”
“What about a sense of wonder? Take ghosts,” I offered. “We see a ghost, and whether we like it or not, it exists. You can’t touch it, exactly, and you can’t tell exactly when it will appear. Doesn’t it make you wonder?” I shrugged. “But you talk about … what if there were a world where there were no ghosts? How would that change things? I asked that in a class. No one knew. They hadn’t even thought about it.”
“That’s it. They don’t even think about it. How could you envision a
Hamlet
without the impetus of his father’s ghost?”
“That could be rather discouraging. What do they do when they see Professor Miller’s ghost? Just look and plod on?”
He nodded. “I asked one of them to really look at her ghost before it disappeared. He’s cast in
Hamlet
next term. You know what he said?”
“I’m afraid to guess.”
“‘It’s just a ghost.’” Martin slammed his hand on the desk. “It’s just a ghost!”
“Sad about Miranda,” I mused. “Now she’s just another ghost.”
“I don’t know that the woman was ever alive—always walking around with that self-pitying air, as though the world were about to crush her.”
“Perhaps it was,” I said. “She was born to money, widowed young, and forced to raise and educate two children.”
“Lots of people do that, and they don’t carry the weight of the world around so that everyone can see.”
“But was that enough to make someone want to kill her?”
“No. I doubt that.” Martin leaned forward across the desk. “What did you do in government, Johan?”
“Before they ran me out, I was in charge of environmental matters. Why?”
“Because you’ve scarcely said ‘good day’ to me before now.”
“I didn’t have a student who had questions, and your reputation is not exactly as the most approachable—”
“Ha! Well, that’s true. So why are you worried about who killed Miranda?”
“I’m attached to Llysette, and she’s single and attractive, and no one knows who killed Miranda or why. Do you blame me?”
“Do you suspect me?”
“No,” I answered truthfully. “But you’re probably pretty observant, and you might have seen something.”
“You don’t trust the watch?”
“It’s not a question of trust. They may even have a suspect, but they won’t arrest whoever it might be unless there’s evidence. The good Dutch character, you know. Without evidence, no arrest.” I laughed. “Of course, once there’s any evidence at all, it’s rather hard to change their minds. For now, though, legalities don’t protect Llysette.”
“You have a point there. Not a very good one, but a point.” He frowned. “You can believe me or not. I was in the lighting booth, and I didn’t see anyone, except for the students. Martin Winston was one, and the other was Gisela Bars. They were with me the whole time. And I don’t know why anyone would even bother with Miranda. I really don’t. She tried to flirt with you, and with Branston-Hay, and with Henry Hite, but you never had eyes for anyone except Llysette, and they love and honor their wives, at least so far as I know. Me? She never looked in my direction, thank heavens. With Amy, that was probably a good thing.”
“Amy is your wife?”
He nodded. “She got a job as an electronics technician with the state watch in Borkum.”
“Yes.” I waited.
“That’s it. You know what I know. That’s also what I told the watch.” He stretched and stood. “Have any ideas about getting acting students to think about creating reality?”
I stood, following his lead. “Could you play-act? Make one of them a ghost,
and insist that the others treat him or her like a real ghost? And start knocking points off their grades for every unrealistic action they take?”
“You believe that would work?”
“I don’t know, but a lot of them live only for grades. Make it real through the use of grades—sometimes that works.”
“Obviously a graduate of the school of practical politics.”
“Theory often doesn’t work, I’ve found. And Dutch students do respond to practical numbers.”
He actually grinned, if only for a moment, then bowed.
I found my way back to my office, noting that the two zombies had finished mulching the flower beds along the one walkway and were working on those flanking the stairs up to the Physical Sciences building. Gilda waved as I passed her office and climbed the stairs.
When I got back to the Natural Resources building, David was nowhere around, as was so often the case, and Gilda was juggling calls on the wireset console.
“Greetings, Johan. Why so glum?” asked young Grimaldi from the door of his office. His gray chalk-stripe suit and gray and yellow cravat marked either his European heritage or natural flamboyance. I wasn’t sure which.
“I just had a meeting with Gregor Martin. He actually smiled once.”
“He does sometimes. He’s actually a pretty good director, but I’d be grim if I had to work with our students in theatre, too. It’s bad enough in geography and natural resources. One of them wrote that a monsoon was a class of turbojet bomber in the Austro-Hungarian Luftwehr.”
“He’s probably right.”
“But in geography class?” Grimaldi laughed. “See you later. Did you get David’s note?”
“Which one?”
He laughed again, and went back into his office, while I unlocked my door and stepped inside, stepping on a paper that had been slipped under the door. I picked it up—Clarice Reynolds was the named typed on the cover sheet—and shook my head. Despite written instructions on the syllabus directing students to leave papers in my box in the department office, some never got the word.
I set the folder on the corner of the small desk and sat down. After looking blankly out the window for a long time, I finally picked up the handset and dialed, listening to the whirs and clicks until a hard feminine voice answered, “Minister vanBecton’s office.”
“Yes. This is Doktor Johan Eschbach. I have discovered that I will be in Columbia City on Thursday, and I thought I might get together with Minister vanBecton sometime in the late afternoon.”
“Just a moment, please, Doktor.”
I found the tip of my fountain pen straying toward my mouth, but I managed
to stop before I put more tooth marks on the case. Outside, the clouds were thickening, but it was still probably too warm for snow.
“Johan, what took you so long? You got your invitation on Friday.” Again, vanBecton’s voice was almost boomingly cheerful.
“On Friday, you may recall, I was in Columbia. I did not actually receive the invitation until Saturday, and I didn’t think you wanted to be bothered over the weekend.”
“I’m in a bit of a rush here, but what do you say to stopping in around four o’clock? That will give you plenty of time to get dressed for the reception. Where are you staying?”

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