Ghosts of Columbia

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “Johan, as you well know from your own past experience in government, people will always speculate.”

  “It looks like those speculations are growing, not to mention some strong objections, particularly from the Anglican-Baptists or from Deseret, to researching ghosts as transitory electrical phenomena.” .

  “They’re certainly transitory, although there seems to be some evidence that magnetic fields enhance their duration. Sellig-Ailes actually plotted ghost duration phenomena along the strongest lines of the earth’s magnetic fields. The data were rather convincing.” Branston-Hay shifted his weight in the chair again.

  I continued to appear oblivious. “It would take a large difference engine to do that, I can see. Has anyone tried to replicate the effect with a magnetic field in a laboratory?” I watched the tightening of his face before I added, “Do you suppose they were doing something like that in California? That would certainly have upset a great number of souls.” The pun was intentional, although I suspected it would be lost on Gerald.

  “Unless we attempted murder in the laboratory, which no one in his right mind would do, Johan, it would be rather difficult to study a ghost here or in any Babbage center. Ghosts don’t just appear at will in our laboratories. That’s one of the reasons studying them is so difficult and why so many projects work on simulations—I mean simulations of ghost behavior, not simulations of ghosts,” he added hastily.

  “Of course.” I laughed. “I didn’t mean that.” I stood. “I really didn’t mean to go off like that, but when you mentioned logic I thought of the religious types and the mess in California.” I shrugged, then bowed. “I appreciate your clarifying Mister Paulus’s problem. I must confess that I had a similar experience with the young man, but I had thought it was more related to stubbornness than to logic.”

  “I have also found Mister Paulus stubborn.” Branston-Hay stood up. “Lack of logic and stubbornness often go together, often, as we have discussed, even within the government of the Republic.”

  “So right. So right.” I nodded. “Perhaps at some point we should have lunch.”

  “I would like that.”

  “So would I. Thank you again for the explanation about Mister Paulus.” I nodded again and left, offering yet another nod to the clerk in the outer office, a square-faced older woman in the somber hues of brown that declared her Dutch origins more surely than a sign painted on her forehead could have. She reminded me of the government clerks in Columbia City. Her nod was barely more than perfunctory, but I bestowed a broad smile on her before I headed back toward my office.

  The smile I bestowed on Gertrude, cheerfully sweeping the steps down to the middle of the campus, was more genuine. I even smiled at Hector, who is one of the few somber zombies I’ve seen. Surprisingly, he smiled back.

  I was still wondering about the smile when I entered the department offices and Gilda gestured at me. “Doktor Eschbach?”

  “Yes?”

  “Someone called from a Deputy Minister vanBecton’s office.” After a glance at David’s closed door, Gilda grinned at me from her desk. “They asked for Subminister Eschbach. I told them that we had a very distinguished Herr Doktor Professor Eschbach.”

  “You can’t really add all those honorifics together.”

  “I know, but I hate government, and the clerk who placed the call was snooty.” Gilda extended a piece of paper.

  “Most federals are, even down to the clerks.” The name on the paper was Gillaume vanBecton, and the number on the paper was a federal exchange. I didn’t recognize the name, not that I would. When Speaker Hartpence had been elected, he’d removed all the old ministerial appointees, and I had recognized very few of the new names then. Two years later, especially after Waltar’s and Elspeth’s deaths, I recognized even fewer. Unfortunately, I did recognize the number, and I tried not to sigh. “I’ll return the call.”

  “I’ll place it for you.” Gilda grinned again, and I returned the grin, since we both knew it was returning snobbery with snobbery. Still, I’m petty enough to be able to enjoy that and was grateful to Gilda for offering, since I never would have asked. And it was better that she place the call, rather than have me retreat to my office, if the message were what I thought it might be.

  She picked up the headset and dialed. I waited.

  “This is Doktor Eschbach’s office, returning a call from a Herr vanBecton.” Gilda raised both eyebrows. “Just a moment.” She looked at me. “They’re connecting him.”

  “I’ll get it in my office. That way I won’t tie up your wire.”

  By the time I lifted my handset, Gilda was saying, “Just a moment, Minister vanBecton.”

  “I have it, Gilda. Johan Eschbach here. I understand you had called.”

  “Bill vanBecton here. I do appreciate your prompt return of my call, Doktor Eschbach.” At that point, there was a click as Gilda left the wire. “I regret the necessity of the call, but I was hoping you could pay me a visit here within the next few days. The return of the prodigal son is a mixed blessing.”

  I stiffened at the deadly words recalling me to service, but only said, “Mixed indeed. I could be there on Friday afternoon.”

  “That would be more than adequate. Call it a consulting assignment based on past services. Of course, as in the past, we will pay your daily fee and expenses, and a bonus upon completion of your work.”

  “I thought I recognized the number.”

  “If so, you’ll know my office. I look forward to seeing you on Friday.”

  “And I you. Good day, Minister vanBecton.”

  “To you also, Doktor Eschbach.”

  I set down the handset slowly and looked out into the graying skies and swirling leaves. Being recalled to service in the Spazi was scarcely what I had expected. While it was technically possible, I’d never heard of it happening before. And why now? Were Congresslady Alexander’s charges of Austro-Hungarian infiltration correct? Or did vanBecton know of my work for Ralston?

  I took a deep breath as the leaves swirled beneath me on the green. Nothing was ever simple, and nothing ever ended. I took another deep breath.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Wednesday started like Tuesday, with a smiling Marie Rijn.

  “Today I intend to wash and press the curtains, Doktor. They’re dusty, and the windowsills are a disgrace. You may be neat, but …”

  The implication was that I wasn’t clean enough, and that the white lace curtains—did any truly Dutch residence have anything besides shimmering white lace curtains?—weren’t either.

  “I do appreciate it, Marie.”

  “I know, Doktor. Long hours you work and there being no family to be as clean as it should be …”

  I nodded and searched out my overcoat, leaving the house to her.

  The day was gray and windy. I didn’t see mister Derkin at Samaha’s, not that I probably ever would, and I did get to my office early.

  After reading and discarding David’s rewriting of the minutes of the last faculty meeting, I picked up the wireset and tried to reach Llysette. She answered neither her home number nor her office extension. Perhaps she was in class, although she usually managed to avoid teaching before nine-thirty.

  I rummaged through my case and laid out a draft of the test for Environmental Economics. Was the question on infrastructures too broad? Would they really understand—There was a rap on the door.

  “Johan?” Young Grimaldi stood in the door of my office. In his European-cut suits he was always chipper, and I suppose I would be too with that much money, even if his family had been forced to flee from Ferdinand. “Do you have a moment?”

  “Almost an hour, if you need it.” I grinned. “What’s on your mind?”

  He slipped into the hard chair across the desk from me with that aristocratic elegance. “They reopened Monte Carlo—the casino.”

  “Ferdinand did? When?”

  “Sometime last week. There’s always some delay in the news coming out of the Empire.”

>   “At times I have thought it would be nice if our reporters had some delays imposed. Then a lot of trash wouldn’t make it to print.”

  He looked appalled. So I added, “I don’t mean Ferdinand’s kind of censorship—just delays. Does it really matter whether an aging movie star like Ann Frances Davis could never forget her one great love, an obscure football announcer named Dutch? Or whether Emelia vanDusen is going to wed Hans van Rijssen Broekhuysen and unite the two largest fortunes in New Amsterdam?” I took a deep breath. “The reopening bothers you?”

  “It shouldn’t. I’ve lived almost half my life in Columbia.” He glanced toward the window and the gray clouds before continuing. “Sometimes, Johan …” He offered a self-deprecating grin. “It would be easier to forget the past.”

  I understood, although I didn’t know that he knew that. “Sometimes … but without the past we wouldn’t be who we are.”

  “I suppose. And I suppose that things could be worse.”

  “There is always the issue of progress,” I offered.

  He frowned. “Do you really think the world is a better place now? That progress in technology has meant anything more than better ways to kill?”

  “Medicine is better. Women don’t die in childbirth, and that makes for happier homes with fewer tormented ghosts.”

  “It also makes for bigger battles with fewer ghosts to remind us of the horrors of war.”

  “That’s true enough. On the other hand, we don’t see civil wars in the Balkans. There aren’t any pogroms in the Polish and German parts of the Empire. The Greeks stopped killing the Turks generations ago—”

  “That’s probably because Ferdinand’s father killed most of the Greeks, like his grandfather killed off most of the Serbs.” Grimaldi snorted. “And that left the Croats with all the land.”

  I shrugged. “Some rivalries only end when one group is exterminated.”

  “You approve of genocide?”

  “I didn’t say that.” I forced a laugh. “I have noticed, however, that peace among human beings tends to exist only as a condition of some sort of force, and some groups seem destined to fight forever—like the Irish and the Brits, or the Copts and the Muslims.”

  “Or Japan and Chung Kuo? That could get nasty—maybe nastier than Ferdinand’s March to the Sea—although I don’t see how.”

  “Don’t say that. From what Llysette has told me, it was pretty horrible.” I paused. “Still, things can be horrible anywhere. DeGaulle’s efforts to push New France’s boundaries right up to the Panama Canal haven’t been exactly bloodless, and the Panamanian Protectorate is effectively a Spazi police state.”

  At the mention of the Spazi, Grimaldi glanced toward the open door.

  “I’ve said far worse.” Still, I changed the subject. “You said that the story about the casino upset you.”

  “I don’t know,” Grimaldi mused. “The story about the casino—I can recall running for the dirigible, and hearing the roar of the panzerwagens. My father never opposed Ferdinand. He even offered to accept an Austro-Hungarian protectorate. Ferdinand didn’t even bother to respond. The armored divisions just poured out of San Remo. What could President Bourbon-Philippe do? The Spanish had already caved in, and Columbia …” Grimaldi shook his head.

  “I’m sorry.”

  He laughed harshly. “There’s not much you can do, Johan. Not more than fifteen years later. At least they had to wait almost twenty years for my father’s ghost to fade.”

  There wasn’t too much I could say about that. So I nodded.

  “Everything’s so quiet—here or in what remains of France. So clean, so efficient. Even Ferdinand’s gas ovens are environmentally safe—except to the Gypsies and the outspoken Jews. Everyone just goes to sleep and doesn’t wake up. It’s a hell of a quietly efficient and environmentally sound world, Johan.” He looked at me. “Why did you leave the government?”

  “It got harder and harder to do my job. Let’s leave it at that.”

  “I think I understand.” He shook his head and stood up. “Time to face the well-groomed and empty-minded masses.”

  “All young in any culture tend to be empty-minded,” I pointed out. “I suspect” we were.

  “We were probably happier then.” He gestured from the door and was gone.

  I looked at the test for a while, made some corrections, and packed up my leather folder for my first class.

  As I walked across the green, absently waving to Hector, bagging leaves in a dun-gray canvas bag, I wondered how many people like Grimaldi and Llysette were tucked away in the back corners of Columbia, unable to protest for fear of losing their last sanctuary. Even I had looked to the door at the mention of the Spazi.

  The wind, almost warm, blew through my hair, but I shivered anyway.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Miranda’s memorial service was on Thursday afternoon at four o’clock. When I had talked to Llysette on the wire in the morning, after trying to reach her for nearly two days, she had indicated she would not be free until close to dinnertime. She had been almost curt, with a student waiting. So I had called Marie on the wire and told her not to prepare anything for dinner. I had also refrained from telling Llysette about the trip to Columbia and decided to go to Miranda’s service alone. The watch had released no information on Miranda’s murder besides a perfunctory statement on continuing the investigation, but after vanBecton’s call, it was clear I was going to be involved through more than mere curiosity.

  Following my two o’clock class, I put on a black armband I had dug out of my armoire that morning. From the office I headed to the Bank of New Bruges to deposit the errant pension cheque that had arrived on Wednesday, and then I walked down to the small Anglican-Baptist chapel two blocks off the main square. No one saw the mourning band because it continued to drizzle and I wore my camel waterproof. I’ve never liked umbrellas, perhaps because they tied up one hand, and in the past that could have been a real problem.

  After slipping in the side door at a quarter before the hour, I sat near the rear of the church on the right-hand side. I eased out of the waterproof as soon as I sat down because, despite the drizzle, the day was warm for mid-October. Watching as people drifted slowly into the small church, I was not entirely surprised to see Llysette. She wore dark blue flared silk trousers and a white blouse with a loose blue vest that matched her trousers. She carried an umbrella, but had not worn a coat. She entered through the main door, carefully closed the umbrella, and sat halfway back. I bent down to check my boots before she looked in my direction.

  The pipe organ began with something suitably somber, and a young and clean-shaven man and a woman walked down the aisle and sat in the front pew on the right. Presumably he was one of Miranda’s sons, and she was his wife. They both wore black, and she had a heavy veil.

  Behind them, on both sides of the aisle, were a number of people from the university, including Doktor Dierk Geoffries and his wife Annette; Samuel Dortmund, the brass instructor; Wilhelm Mondriaan; and Johanna Vonderhaus. I didn’t quite understand why Mondriaan was there, except as a matter of courtesy, and he did have the Dutch penchant for courtesy—not to mention the somber clothes that fit in so well in mourning situations.

  The crowd was small, less than a hundred souls, not even half filling the small chapel, and the faint scent of perfume was overwhelmed by the pervading odor of damp stone.

  Philippe Hague, the college chaplain, stood up to conduct the service, although he was of the Dutch Reformed persuasion.

  “In God is our salvation and our glory; the rock of our strength, and our refuge, is in God. Praise be to the Lord, for our world, our souls, and our salvation. Let us pray….”

  Although the liturgy was not exactly familiar, I opened the book, found the words, and bowed my head with the rest.

  The service was standard, commending the soul of the dear departed to the care of a merciful God, praying that God would cause her murderer to repent of his sins, and saying what a wonderful per
son Miranda Miller had been. No one mentioned that she had been somewhat tight, even by old Dutch standards, but I did find out that she had been widowed young. Her husband had died in the confusing mess that had marked the abortive Columbian intervention in the rape of Singapore by the Chinese.

  Good Chaplain Hague did not call the incident by any of the commonly accepted terms, instead characterizing it as “that sadly unfortunate involvement” in Asian affairs. Maybe that was symptomatic of the reasons I casually detested him. We might be too weak to get involved on the far side of the Pacific, especially with the limited range of our electric submersibles and the lack of fuel depots for our handful of aircraft carriers, but the only thing unfortunate about our attempt to forestall Chung Kuo’s annexation of Malaysia was our inability to stop the Chinese. Of course, we hadn’t been able to stop the Japanese from taking over half the islands in Southeast Asia, either, and the Philippines seemed likely to fall any day. Since we’d left them to the Aussies as a protectorate after taking over Cuba in the Spanish-American War—no one had wanted American ghosts in faraway Asia back then—it wasn’t a Columbian problem.

  Philippe seemed to think that pacifism was a workable philosophy. Ghosting may have reduced conquest, but it has never stopped it. In fact, I suspect ghosts gave a slight but significant advantage to nations with policies of accretion, or small conquests.

  The eulogy was all too long. When the time came I hoped mine would be shorter, or nonexistent. That Miranda deserved better than being murdered didn’t excuse gross beatification of what had seemed to me a small personality.

  I slipped from the pew just before the final blessing and out into the heavier rain. I got wet, of course, because I didn’t try to put on my waterproof before I went outside.