Ghosts of Columbia

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “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?”

  “Probably with friends, but that remains to be seen.”

  “Many things do, but I look forward to seeing you on Thursday.” A click, and he was gone.

  I looked up another number in my address book and dialed.

  “Elsneher and Fribourg.”

  “Johan Eschbach for Eric, please.”

  “Just a moment.”

  The clouds outside were definitely getting blacker.

  “Johan—is it really you?”

  “Who else? I called because I’ll be in town on Thursday. They invited the old hack to a presidential dinner.”

  “You’re more than welcome to stay with us. Judith would like that. So would I. Even if you have to attend the dinner, at least we can have breakfast together on Friday. Can’t we?”

  “I’d like that. How is Judith?”

  “She’s fine.” He coughed. “I’ve got a client on the wire …”

  “I understand. Can I stop by the house about five, before the dinner?”

  “Sure. I’ll tell Judith. See you then.” And he clicked off.

  I watched the clouds for a moment, then, before my eleven o’clock, collected the copies of the short test I planned to spring on my students, leafed through my notes, and skimmed the latest copy of the Journal of Columbian Politics. I tried not to hold my nose at the article entitled “Rethinking the Role of the Politician’s Personal Life.”

  At ten before eleven, squaring my shoulders, I collected the greenbooks and the thirty copies of the test and marched over to Smythe Hall to do battle over environmental economics.

  Once the class had filed in, I pulled the greenbooks from under the desk.

  “Unnnnghhh …” That was a collective sigh.

  I smiled brightly and handed out the greenbooks first, followed by the single sheet of the test. “You can answer one question or the other with a short essay. You have twenty minutes. Just answer one question,” I repeated with a caution created by past experience.

  “But, Doktor, this test was not announced.”

  “If you check the syllabus, you will note that it states that tests may be given in any class.”

  “Unnnghhhh …”

  I had the feeling, from the groans, from the distracted looks on students’ faces during the lecture following the test, and from leafing through a few of the greenbooks when I returned to my offic
e, that not a few had neither read nor considered the assignment.

  My two o’clock wasn’t much better, not when half the class failed to understand the distinction between pathways of contamination and environmental media.

  After my two o’clock, rather than immediately deal with either exams or the papers I had collected in my last class, I walked down to the post centre. I could have gone at lunchtime, since Llysette had been invited to a working lunch by Doktor Geoffries to discuss the student production schedule for the spring, but instead I’d spent the time trying to scan through some of the journal articles—not that I would ever catch up. Not if I wanted to remain sane.

  Constable Gerhardt was by the empty bandbox in the square, chatting with the same young watch officer who seemed to turn up regularly when I was around, thanks, I suspected, to Minister vanBecton. I nodded to them both, rather than tipping the hat I wasn’t wearing, since it still wasn’t cold enough to wear one.

  The chill wind had been promising snow for more than a week, but we had gotten neither cold rain, sleet, nor snow—just continuing cold wind—although the thick clouds to the northwest looked more than usually threatening. Despite the blustery weather and the few leaves hanging on the trees, the grass in the square was raked nearly spotlessly clean; even the hedges had been picked clean, as usual.

  The lobby of the post centre was almost deserted, with only a gray-haired, stocky woman standing at the window. I unlocked and opened the postbox. Besides the monthly electric bill from NBEI and the wireline bill from New Bruges Telewire, there were two legal-size envelopes. The brown one had no return address. The other had the letterhead of International Import Services, PLC. Both were postmarked “Federal District.”

  I tucked all four into my black leather case, which contained, generally, my lectures and materials for the day.

  “Ye find anything interesting?” asked Maurice.

  “You always ask, and you always see it first.” I grinned at the post handler. He grinned back, as always.

  I walked quickly back to my office, my breath steaming in the afternoon air. I waved to Gilda as I passed the front office.

  “Doktor Eschbach, Doktor Doniger was looking for you.”

  “Is he in his office?”

  “For a little while, I think.” She looked over her shoulder quickly, as if to confirm her statement. Her shoulders were stiff.

  I knocked on the frame of the half-open door. “You were looking for me?”

  “Yes, Johan. Please come in.”

  I shut the door behind me and looked around the paper-piled office. David believed in horizontal filing. Although he didn’t invite me, I sat down in the single chair anyway.

  Before he could get started, I said, “I’ve been invited to a Presidential Palace dinner on Thursday. So I’ll have to make up Thursday’s and Friday’s classes one way or another.”

  “You always do, Johan, and I will tell the dean. She will be pleased that our faculty continues to travel in such exalted circles.” He smiled.

  I smiled and waited. Then I added, “Gilda said you were looking for me.”

  “Johan, I read your commentary in the last Journal of Columbian Politics. Don’t you think it was a trifle … unfounded?” He leaned back in his creaky swivel and puffed on the long meerschaum, filling the office with intermittent blasts of air pollution, the kind I’d once been charged with reducing when it occurred at industrial sites.

  “Commentaries are by nature unfounded. Of course, I could have made it three times as long and proved it with examples.”

  “Do you honestly believe that disposable glass is better than recycling metals? You even cited a recycling rate of almost eighty percent in major Columbian cities.”

  “Obviously what I wrote was not so clear as I thought.” I coughed before I continued, glad that I had not followed my father’s pipe-smoking habits. “My point was not that either was environmentally better. You can make a case for either. I was pointing out that the Reformed Tories used the press and half-facts to build a case against the Liberals that had no factual support. In short, that despite all the environmental rhetoric it was politics as usual. Just like the ghost business is more politics than science.”

  “The ghost business? That sad affair with Miranda Miller? Surely you weren’t mixed up with that, were you?”

  “Only to the degree that one gets mixed up when a murder occurs before a friend’s recital. That wasn’t what I was referring to, however. I meant all these bombings and fires in schools across the country, all in the Babbage centers, and all protesting supposed ghosting research.”

  David looked totally blank. “What does this have to do with the journal article?”

  “They’re both political. You can make a case for or against disposable glass; you can make a case for or against ghosting research. Does the voting public really pay any attention to the facts? It’s a question of which side most successfully appeals to existing prejudices.”

  “Johan, I’m still troubled about the glass business.”

  “Most people don’t realize it, David, but glass is structurally a liquid. A very stiff liquid, to be sure, but a liquid. It is also virtually inert, and comprised mainly of silicon and various oxides. Provided lead isn’t used, as in crystal, you can bury it or dump it and the only harm it can do you is cut you. Metals aren’t nearly as beneficial to the environment, and even with recycling, some are lost to the environment. So, claiming that recycled metals are more beneficial than discarded glass is misleading. Glass could certainly be recycled, and if it weren’t so cheap, that could have happened long ago. It may still happen.”

  “Dean Er Recchus asked me if I thought that the commentary would hurt the fund-raising effort.”

  “Not if it’s handled right. Just pretend you never saw it. Pretend that you have so many people writing in so many publications that you can’t keep track, and no one will think a thing. Make an issue of it, and I’m sure you both can find a way to hurt fund-raising.”

  “Johan, I really wish you were not so … cynical.”

  “Realistic, David. Realistic. Besides, if the dean gives you too much trouble, point out that no one made an issue of her rather close friendship with Marinus Voorster.”

  “I couldn’t do that.”

  I stood up. “Then why are you bothering me about an obscure commentary in a journal no one outside academia even reads?”

  “Johan, I never meant to—”

  “Good. I need to get ready for my two o’clock.” I left, nodding at Gilda with a polite smile that was probably transparent. While I had some indication of David’s lack of involvement with the whole ghost business, his toadying to Dean Er Recchus was inexcusable. He had tenure. Meddling much with his budget would have upset the university system budget committee. Just because he was worried that anything might upset the dean, as if he even understood what real pressures were—I shook my head at the thought as I opened my office door. And neither had even noticed the commentary until more than a month after it had been published. David was looking for an excuse, more than likely, but why? Because I didn’t put up with his academic small-mindedness?

  Back in my office, after I put down my folder, I opened the International Import Services envelope first. It contained an invoice and a cheque. The cheque was for five hundred dollars; the invoice merely stated, “Consulting Services.” I didn’t recognize the name on the signature line—Susan something or other—but it was undoubtedly genuine. International Imports was a real firm, trading mainly in woolens, electronics, and information. It had a retinue of consultants worldwide, and probably half of them were actually export consultants. I’d always fallen in the other category. Still, five hundred dollars was equivalent to nearly a month’s pay as a professor, and I took a deep breath.

  I studied the second envelope before opening it. Although I couldn’t be absolutely sure, the slightly more flexible feel of the paper around the flap indicated a high probability that it had been steamed open
. If I had looked, I suspected that I would have found that most of the envelopes with clippings had been similarly treated, at least recently. VanBecton’s people had been tracking me and knew my comings and goings. Presumably they had read my post, including the clippings, untraceably posted in the Federal District, probably at the main post center. The clipping itself was short.

  ST. Louis (RPI)—A series of explosions ripped through the Aster Memorial Electronic Sciences Center at the University of Missouri at St. Louis shortly after midnight this morning. The ensuing fire gutted the building. Although no fatalities were reported, more than a dozen firemen were injured in the blaze that turned the skyline of St. Louis into a second dawn.

  According to early reports, the explosions began in the Babbage wing of the center. Only last week, the chancellor of the University of Missouri system had defended UMSL’s policy of accepting Defense Ministry grants for psychic research.

  Governor Danforth denounced the action as that of “ill-informed zealots.” Speaking for the Alliance for World Peace, Northrop Winsted added the Alliance’s condemnation of violence. Similar statements were also issued by the Midwest Diocese of the Roman Catholic Church and the Missouri Synod of the Anglican-Baptists.

  At the slapping of rain droplets on my second-floor windows, I glanced out to the north, but the rain was falling so heavily I could barely see Smythe Hall across the green.

  I slipped the clipping and the cheque into my folder, and, with a sigh, pulled out the stack of short papers I had collected from Environmental Economics 2B. Most of the students thought they understood economics and the environment. I did, too, until I’d actually had to deal with both.

  I’d graded perhaps ten of the twenty-six papers by quarter to five, and was still chuckling over one line: “Money should be no object nor price no impediment to the continuation of our priceless environment …” While I understood the underlying sentiment, the writer—one Melissa Abottson—had inadvertently illustrated the fuzzy thinking of her generation. What she meant was that a pristine environment was worth a great deal, but that wasn’t what she had written. Priceless meant without a price, and if the environment were priceless then money was irrelevant—which certainly wasn’t what she meant. Likewise, the environment means the external conditions and objects surrounding us, or the world, and in the broadest sense, the environment, in some form or another, will continue, whether we do or not.