Ghosts of Columbia

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Was that bad? I thought so.

  Wasn’t it just possible that the slow progress of conquest was due in part to the inability of soldiers to accept ghosts on a massive basis? Supposedly the horrors of Hastings almost undid the armies of William the Unfortunate, so much so that it was three generations before his heir fully grasped even England.

  Firearms had helped dispel that ghostly influence, especially for those armies with sharpshooters, like the assassin regiments of Ferdinand VI. But sometimes a good general can use horrors, as the New French general Santa Anna did at the Alamo. He was really a Mexican then, but that’s not what the New French histories state. On balance, it seemed as though modern technology and medicine were slowly destroying ghosts, except in warfare, which is barbarous by nature.

  But all the ghost-related projects were being fired and/or having difficulty—and that went for projects in Europe as well as in Columbia. Except there was something wrong with my logic, and I couldn’t put my finger on it.

  I leaned back in the hard seat of the local and tried to fall asleep in the dim light, with the click, clickedy, click of the rails in one ear and the snoring of the heavyset woman two seats back in the other.

  In the end, I neither slept nor thought, but sat there in a semidaze until I reached Lebanon.

  In the station parking lot, the dowager-sleek lines of the Stanley waited for me, half concealed in the mist created by the cold rain that had fallen on warmer pavement.

  Even after two days the Stanley lit off easily, and I drove eastward through the darkness, alert for moose. The big animals had been making a comeback, and any collision between one and a steamer would favor the moose.

  The rain had been warm enough that it had not formed ice on the roads, and steady enough that few were out, even on a late Friday evening.

  The only real signs of life were at the Dutch Reformed Church in Alexandria, where a handful of hardy souls were leaving a lecture on “The Growth and Heritage of the Leisure Class” by some doktor. At least, that’s what I thought the raindamped poster stated. A leisure class of Dutch heritage? I almost laughed.

  Marie, bless her Dutch soul, had not only left on the light, but had left a small beef pie in the refrigerator. I wolfed down all of it cold, even before I carried my garment bag up to the bedroom.

  I knew I couldn’t sleep until I rechecked Branston-Hay’s files, the ones I had pirated, but I did change into dry exercise sweats before I returned to the study to fire up the difference engine.

  Carolynne hovered by the desk.

  I bowed to her. “Good evening, Carolynne.”

  “Good evening, sweet prince.”

  “My mother was surprised that you were still around.”

  “No more but so?”

  “Were you in love with my father?” I asked, hoping her words, twisted as they might be, would prove illuminating.

  “Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.”

  “My father, unkind?”

  “O, help him, sweet heavens!”

  I tried not to shake my head. “Why do you disappear so much?”

  “To have seen what I have seen, to see what I see. Thy madness be paid by weight ‘til our scale turn the beam and’til our brief candle weighs out.”

  I pursed my lips. What did she mean, if anything? “Brief candle weighs out?”

  “The more seen I, the less to see.”

  Was that it? The more visible a ghost, the shorter its lingering. “But where do you go?”

  “Nature is fine in love, and where’tis fine it sends some precious instance of itself.”

  I shook my head. “What do you do? Being a ghost has to be boring.”

  “There’s rue for you, and here’s some for me. Fennel and kennel and the old bitch went mad.” She gave me a smile, not exactly one of innocence. “Impatience does become a dog that’s mad. Yet your father left me some rare and precious effects, such as reading …”

  Ghosts committing suicide? That was what Ophelia’s lines were about, but where had the other lines come from and what did they mean? Reading? Did she read when she was invisible?

  “You like company?”

  “Wishers were ever fools. All’s but naught.”

  Since she was talking, more than we had since I was a small boy, I asked another question. “Some people talk about ghosts taking over people’s bodies. Could that happen?”

  “The grave’s a fine and crowded place, and none but do there embrace.” Carolynne laughed. “Mad thou art to say it, but not without ambition.”

  I tried not to wince at the mixed language. Was everything she spoke the result of her singing and theatre training, drilled into her being so that her ghost reacted semirationally? Or were the words random?

  The translation, if I understood, if the words were more than ghostly random ramblings, was that it was dangerous, but possible. “What if …” I paused before continuing. “What if someone were dying, and the ghost left the body, and modern medicine saved the person?”

  “First it bended, and then it broke, and pansies are for thought …”

  She drifted away, like Ophelia on a psychic river, and I watched the faint whiteness shift through the mirror, presumably to the artificial lodestone to rebuild her strength.

  Shaking my head, I reached for the switch to turn the difference engine back on. Then I rubbed my forehead. I still wondered if the files I had pilfered from Branston-Hay contained any hints of what was going on, and why vanBecton thought I was so trapped.

  A good hour of scanning files in my most skeptical manner passed before I found the first hint. The key lay in one almost innocent-sounding sentence.

  “… principal interest was in the economic section of the draft report … concerns over the elimination cost per ghost … laughable, given the costs of any war …”

  I kept reading.

  “… without further progress in reducing per-ghost costs … termination of third extension set for January I, 1994 …”

  At the end of another file, I found the letter steamer, so to speak.

  “RM pleased with improved replicator … budget review to be dropped …”

  I leaned back in the chair. Branston-Hay had been padding his budget, and the president’s budget examiners had caught him—but they hadn’t turned him in. They’d asked for some applied research. It all made sense—except Miranda’s murder. Branston-Hay had no reason to murder Miranda. First, he wouldn’t have really understood the political ramifications, and I had to question if Miranda would have. Except her daughter-in-law had pointed out Miranda’s intuitive or spiritual understandings. So what had Miranda known that was so dangerous that someone had wanted to kill her?

  She probably knew that Branston-Hay had been doing secret psychic research, but vanBecton knew that, and so had everyone else—although almost no one knew the extent of that research. Branston-Hay wasn’t the type for murder; at least I didn’t think so. Could vanBecton’s tame Spazi have murdered her to put the finger on me? Or did vanBecton already know that I had chosen to work for the president?

  What about Llysette? Where did she fit in? I had a feeling, but I couldn’t really prove it.

  With more questions than answers, I drifted into a doze in the chair, to be awakened by the clock’s chimes. It was two o’clock, so I hadn’t slept that long. I turned off the difference engine, pulled myself out of the chair, and headed up to bed.

  Carolynne was nowhere to be seen, but that no longer meant much, I realized.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Since the house was spotless—Marie did more than she should have when I was gone and less than she felt necessary, I was sure—all the housekeeping I had to do on Saturday was wash the dishes I had used for breakfast.

  After I ate and did the dishes, I did get back to running and exercising. I even went over the top of the hill and along the ridge. Then I raked a huge pile of leaves into the compost pile below the garden and sprinkled lime over them.

  A hun
dred years of work on the thin soil had resulted in soil that wasn’t that thin any longer, and the grass was more like a carpet. The garden tomatoes were as good as any, and the time-domesticated raspberries and black raspberries—well, I had frozen pies, freezer jam, and whole frozen berries, more than enough to last until the next summer.

  After my groundskeeping, with sweat and leaf fragments sticking together and plastered even under my clothes, I stripped, took a shower, and dressed.

  Had I seen a flash of white in the study? I looked around, but didn’t see Carolynne. With a sigh, I extricated the strongbox from the wall safe and pulled out another sheaf of bills for Bruce. There were still enough left, but how long they would last if I kept funding unique hardware was another question.

  Outside it was sunny, but the wind was even more bitter than it had been earlier in the morning and ripped at the last of the leaves clinging stubbornly to their trees. I passed but a handful of vehicles, mostly haulers, as I drove the steamer back south to Zuider and LBI to pick up the perturbation replicator. With just scattered brown leaves on the oaks and maples, the dark winter green of the pines stood out on the woodlots higher on the low hills.

  The narrow streets of Zuider were half filled, mainly with families in wellpolished steamers, probably taking children to soccer practice or music lessons or the like, or headed out to shop for bargains in the new mall, the latest facet of Columbian Dutch culture.

  There was another steamer in the LBI lot besides Bruce’s battered Olds ragtop. He’d gotten it when the Pontiac people folded and he couldn’t get decent service on his’52 ragtop.

  A long-haired man was discussing musical programware. “I need more instant memory and a direct audio line …”

  I had heard about the so-called synthesizer revolution and the predictions of Babbage-generated music or the reproduction of master concerts on magnetic disks or thin tapes. I shuddered at the thought of music being reduced to plastic. Somehow, at least a vinyl disc had the feel of semipermanence. Music on plastic tapes—that would be ghost music.

  While Bruce talked with the would-be Babbage composer, I wandered around, mostly thinking. Bruce seemed able to create all this hardware from rough specifications; if it worked, why hadn’t a lot of other techies done the same? Most weren’t as creative as Bruce, and most had no need.

  There also was another reason. Gerald’s comment dropped into my mind—the point that you really couldn’t murder someone in a laboratory to study the ghost. Of course, Ferdinand could—and I suspected our own dear Spazi could.

  I shook my head. Then again, with all the fires in Babbage centers, I wondered if, in Branston-Hay’s position, I’d even want to try freelancing. Bruce had understood it all too well—he’d stayed a techie. Nobody paid any attention to mere technicians.

  Eventually the musical type left, and I wandered up to the counter. “Any specials on unique hardware?”

  “No. Only on unique headaches.” Bruce hauled out my difference engine box and opened the top. “Figured I might as well use your packaging for the improbable perturbation replicator.”

  Inside were two black metal boxes linked with cables. The bottom box had two switches on the front and Babbage cables. The top box was smaller and sprouted what appeared to be four trapezoids linked together in the shape of a crude megaphone. The top box also had two matching cable ports.

  “What are these for?”

  “I added those last night. I thought I could link the other gadget—I beg your pardon, the perturbation projector—to this and save some hardware. Whether it will work, I don’t know yet, since I haven’t built it, but it ought to. Any problem with that?”

  “No.”

  “If you need to have the scanning antenna farther from the conversion box, you can just add more cable.”

  “Conversion box? I thought that’s what the file protocol did.”

  “They’re almost the same, except this is more complex. It converts an image of the field, while the other one actually removes the field and converts it.”

  “Oh.” More pieces fell into place.

  “Now … the other one’s going to be a bear.”

  “I didn’t think it would be easy,” I admitted. “Do you need more time?”

  “Do you have it?”

  “I don’t know.” I shrugged. “Maybe.”

  Bruce gave me a nasty grin. “That means you don’t.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I always try to be truthful. It upsets people more than lying.”

  “You are always so cheerful.” I peeled off the bills and laid them on the counter.

  “I try.”

  “You’re very trying.” I hefted the box, and Bruce held the door for me.

  “The other will be ready on Monday—first thing.”

  “I don’t know if I will be, but I’ll be here.”

  “That’s what I liked about you from the first, Johan. You’re always ready—even if you haven’t got the faintest idea what to do.”

  Since that was a pretty accurate description, I really couldn’t say too much except, “Thanks.”

  He stood and watched while I backed out and headed back north to Vanderbraak Centre, and to the watch, and all my problems, including a ghost who had started to talk but spouted dialogue and song lyrics or librettos. Was it bad that she was spouting, or worse that I thought it made sense?

  The clouds were beginning to build to the north, but they didn’t seem to be moving that quickly. Neither was the traffic, once I got behind a logging steamer on the way to the biomass plant outside Alexandria. I speeded up when he took the turnoff for the Ragged Mountain Highway and Lastfound Lake.

  Once I got to the house and got the box and its equipment inside, I just tucked it in a corner in the study. With the sun and the breeze I didn’t feel like playing with electronics inside, especially since the approaching clouds meant snow or freezing rain later.

  First I tried Llysette’s wire, but she either wasn’t home or didn’t choose to answer. So I changed and went back outside and raked up a huge pile of leaves and began to drag and rake them down to the compost pile. The lawn was still partly green, and under the sun I sweated a lot, even with the cold wind.

  Three horn toots sounded up the drive, followed by a small green Reo. Llysette parked outside the car barn and waved.

  I carried the rake back up the hill and tucked it inside the car barn.

  Llysette wore denim trousers and a black Irish cable-knit pullover loose enough for comfort, but with just enough hint of the curves that lay beneath. I saw her overnight case in the front seat, and a gown hung in the back.

  “I wired you, but you weren’t home. So I went back to working up a sweat.”

  “Something you must always be doing, n’est-ce pas?”

  “Pretty much.” Sweaty or not, I gave her an enthusiastic hug and a kiss, and got a reasonable facsimile in response.

  “Would you like to stay for dinner?”

  “Only for dinner?” She leered, which I enjoyed.

  “If you insist, dear lady.”

  We laughed. Then a blast of much cooler air swept across the hillside, swirling some of my hard-raked leaves. Llysette shivered, and we turned to the dark clouds over the hills to the northwest.

  “It looks like it might snow.”

  “I should hope not.”

  “Perhaps you’ll be stuck here.”

  “I have to sing for the Anglican-Baptist chapel tomorrow.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they will pay me.”

  “That’s as good a reason as any.” I laughed and pulled her case from the Reo and headed inside. She carried the gown and hung it in the closet in the master bedroom.

  I hugged her again, but reluctantly released her when I heard her stomach growl. “No breakfast or lunch?”

  She shrugged.

  “I did have some breakfast, but no lunch. Let’s see what there is.”

  I found a block of extra-sharp cheddar, a l
oaf of almost fresh bread, and mined some good apples and a bottle of Sebastopol from the cellar.

  “Good …” the lady murmured after three slices of cheese and a thick slab of lightly toasted oatmeal bread.

  “Of course it’s good. I prepared it.”

  “You should have been a chef, Johan.”

  “I’m not nearly that good. You just need a man who can cook or who can afford a chef.”

  “I cannot cook, not well; that is true. But choosing a man by whether he can cook … that I do not know.”

  “You already have.”

  At least she smiled at that.

  “Your dinner at the Presidential Palace, how was it?”

  I had to shrug. “I guess it was history-making. I heard the president announce the agreement with Japan for us to get their nuclear submersible technology.”

  “Of this you do not sound too positive.”

  “It may be necessary, but I’m not terribly fond of ways to improve military technology. You might have noticed that not very many generals or emperors die in wars.

  “So? They are the leaders.” Her tone was matter-of-fact, as if we were discussing the weather.

  “So? I have this mental problem with people who are so willing to send others off to do the killing, but who take none of the risks themselves.”

  Llysette gave me a sad smile. “In some things you are predictably Columbian. Always there have been rulers, and always there are soldiers. The soldiers die, and the rulers rule. Yet you think it should be otherwise. Would the soldier make a good ruler?”

  “Not necessarily. That wasn’t my point. I do think many rulers would not be so eager to start wars if they stood to die with their soldiers.”

  “You are right, but who could make a ruler face such risks? The world, it does not work that way.”

  “No, it doesn’t.” I sliced some more cheese and offered it to Llysette. “Here.”

  “Thank you.” She pursed her lips. “You are angry with me.”

  “No … not exactly angry. But sometimes I don’t understand. You’ve suffered a lot, and it’s almost like you’re defending the system that tortured you.”