Without a word, Bruce emerged from the workroom and set the equipment boxes on the counter. Also without a word, I peeled off more bills.
Then I looked into the two boxes. The third gadget was simpler than the second, and looked somehow incomplete. Then I realized why. “These attach into the other gadget?”
“I believe you were the one who called it a perturbation replicator. This is the perturbation projector which attaches to the replicator. Now, if you want, we can just call them gadgets, but I defer to your nomenclature.”
“You really are ornery.”
“I do perfectly well on no sleep, impossible specifications for improbable hardware, and the concern that all sorts of people I haven’t seen in years and never wish to see again will suddenly appear.”
“But I like seeing you.”
“That’s true. I haven’t seen this much of you in years.”
“What was it that guy said in that cult second-rate movie—the beginning of a beautiful friendship?”
“Friendship is based on deception, and you destroyed any illusion of that long ago, Johan.”
“So … I am impossibly direct?”
“No. Merely improbably less indirect than the average Columbian. You’ll be all right so long as no one really figures out that you’re about as direct as a sharp knife.”
“Some already have. I’m supposed to stab the other guy, though, or take the fall for a stabbing that’s already taken place.”
“For a nice boy born of cultured parents, you’ve always played in rough company.”
“Tell me.” I closed the boxes.
“I have.” Bruce picked up the second and followed me out to the Stanley, where we placed them both in the front trunk. “I was more than gratified to be a mere technician.”
“Now you’re a distinguished man of commerce.”
“Times like this, I wish I were still an anonymous technician.”
“You’re better paid, and people like me don’t show up as often.” I shut the trunk.
“That’s also true, and your presence is always welcome. It’s the baggage with the clocklike sounds that bothers me.”
“I’ll try to leave it behind.”
Bruce just shook his head as I climbed into the steamer.
The roads were merely damp on the way back to the university. I stopped by Samaha’s and picked up my newspapers, which I didn’t bother to read before heading up to my office. As usual, I was one of the first into the department offices, except, of course, for Gilda.
“Good morning, Gilda.”
“You’re polite this morning.”
“Am I not always?”
“Not always, but on average. Doktor Doniger will not be in until late. He wired in that the ice on the lane was too dangerous.”
I snorted. “I live on Deacon’s Lane, and I got here.”
“Doktor Doniger is somewhat more cautious.”
I nodded, picked up a stack of administrative paperwork and circulars attempting to entice me into prescribing new texts for all my classes, and tromped upstairs.
“Good morning, Johan,” called Grimaldi from his desk. “I see you were one of the hardy few.”
“There was only a trace of slush on the roads.” I paused by his door.
“Any excuse in a storm, I suppose. What do you think—you were in government—about this Japanese nuclear submersible business?”
“Politicians who don’t have to face the weaponry they have built have always worried me.”
“Politicians don’t have to worry about facing weaponry of any sort. That’s the definition of a politician—someone who gets someone else to pay the bill and take the bullets.”
“You’re even more cynical than I am.” I forced a laugh.
“Amen.” He stood. “I suppose I will see you later. Or at tomorrow’s departmental meeting. I’m off to the library.”
“Cheers.”
He waved, and I opened my office. Then I sorted through the memos, ignoring David’s agenda for the departmental meeting, seeing as the top item was still the business of deciding which electives to cut. Most of the papers I tossed, including the questionnaire asking for an item-by-item evaluation on the crosscultural applicability of my courses.
All four days of the Asten Post-Courier were full of stories about the Japanese development, but there was little I hadn’t seen already in the Columbia Post-Dispatch— except for one paragraph in Saturday’s paper..
Among the attendees at the presidential dinner announcing the Japanese initiative was Johan A. Eschbach, a former Minister of Environment. Eschbach is currently a professor at Vanderbraak State University, recently rocked by a murder scandal and allegations involving clandestine psychic research funded by the Ministry of Defense.
I swallowed. Who had said anything about psychic research? VanBecton? His tame pseudo-watch officer? And tying the murder and the research to me was definitely unkind. After rummaging through the papers and my paperwork, I picked up the handset and dialed.
“Hello.”
“Gerald, I need a few minutes with you. How about three-thirty?” I was glad to hear his voice.
“I’m really rather tied up …”
“This isn’t about philosophy. I think you’ll be interested. I’ll see you at three-thirty.” I owed him something, even if he didn’t know he needed it. VanBecton wasn’t going to let him know, and Ralston certainly wasn’t. I took his “ulp” as concurrence and concluded with, “Have a good day, Gerald.”
As eleven o’clock approached, I gathered my folder, my notes, and the next quiz for Environmental Economics, half dreading the still-blank faces that I would see.
Gertrude and Hector were sweeping the remnants of water and frozen slush off the bricked walk leading to Smythe as I passed. Their breathing, and mine, left a white fog in the air.
“Good day, Gertrude. You too, Hector.”
“Every day’s a good day, sir,” she answered.
“Take care, sir,” added Hector.
I almost stopped. Hector had never said a word to me before. Instead, I just answered, “Thank you, Hector.”
Who was more real—the zombie or the ghost? Or did it depend on the situation? Or were they both real? Certainly, the government recognized zombies as pretty much full citizens, except for voting, but a zombie could even petition for that right, not that many had the initiative. But Carolynne seemed about as real as the zombies I knew, if eccentric; Miranda’s ghost, or my grandfather’s, hadn’t. I pushed away the speculations as I climbed the stairs to the second floor.
Nearly a dozen students were still missing by the time the clock chimed. The missing were the ones who hadn’t done the reading. So I smiled my pleasantly nasty smile and cleared my throat.
“As some of you have surmised, I have an unannounced quiz here. For those of you present, the lowest grade possible will be a D. Anyone who is not here who is not in the hospital or the infirmary will fail.”
Three or four of the students exchanged glances, at least one with an “I told you so” look. While I wasn’t exactly thrilled, what Machiavelli said about the ruler applies also to teachers. It is best to be loved and feared, but far better to be feared and not loved than to be loved and not feared.
I handed out the greenbooks first, then the test. “Write a short essay in response to one of the questions.” That was also what the test said, but multimedia repetition is often useful for the selectively illiterate or deaf.
After I collected the tests, we spent the remainder of the period discussing the readings. Most of those in class actually had read the material on the economics of environmental infrastructures. Some even understood it, and I didn’t feel as though I were pulling teeth. It continued to bother me that so many of them would only respond to force, even when learning was in their own self-interest.
Because I carried the tests with me, rather than stopping by the office, I made it to Delft’s, predictably, a good quarter hour before Llysette, and this
time got a table close to the woodstove. With the chill outside, I knew she would choose warmth over a view of bare limbs and gray and brown stone walls.
Victor had just offered the wine when the lady arrived. I nodded to him to pour two glasses and stood to seat her.
“Good afternoon, Doktor duBoise.”
“Afternoon it is, Herr Doktor Eschbach. Good, that is another question.”
“Perchance some wine? This time it is at least Californian.”
Victor faded away.
“This is better.” She took a long swallow of the Sonoma burgundy. “Not so good as—”
“Good French wine, I know.” I grinned, and got a halfsmile, anyway. “What happened?”
“Forms! The Citizenship Bureau—they cannot find my residence report, and so I must complete another. They know I sent one, but …” She shrugged. “Perhaps someday they will let me become a citizen—when I am old and gray.” Llysette swallowed the last of her wine in a second gulp.
“What would you like to eat?” I refilled her glass.
“You would like?” asked Victor, appearing at Llysette’s elbow and winking, as he always did.
“La même, comme ça,” she answered, her voice almost flat.
“Oui, mademoiselle,” he answered. “And you, Doktor Eschbach?”
“I’ll try the tomato brandy mushroom soup with shepherd’s bread and cheese.”
He nodded and slipped back toward the kitchen.
Llysette sipped her second glass of wine, looking emptily at the table.
“Bad morning?”
“Two of them-two lessons—they did not show up. No courtesy they had, and they did not even leave a message. Doktor Geoffries, he says he wants to observe my advanced diction class—and I have not taught this part before.” She glared at me.
I held up a hand. “I’m not your department chair.”
“I am sorry. All of this, it is so … so …”
“Frustrating?”
“Maddening it is.” She took another healthy swallow of wine.
Victor brought Llysette consommé, except it was warm, and my soup and bread. “Would you like your salad now, mam’selle?”
“If you please.”
Victor nodded.
“Have you seen Miranda’s ghost lately?” I asked Llysette.
She gave me a half-frown, half-pout, charming nonetheless, before answering. “Mais non. But never did the ghost enter my office, only the hallway.” She shrugged. “The ghosts, they avoid me, I think.”
Victor eased her salad onto the table and deftly slipped out of sight.
The tomato brandy soup had big succulent mushrooms and was richer than a chocolate dessert. I spooned in every last morsel, interspersed with the cheese and bread.
“A good Frenchman you would have made, Johan. For the way you enjoy good food. The wine, you even appreciate.”
“I trust that is a compliment, dear lady.”
“One of the highest.”
“Then I thank you.” I lifted my wine glass. “Would you like dinner tonight?”
“Dinner, I would like that, but for the next two weeks I am doing rehearsals—except for the weekends.”
“Then we must make do with the weekends.” I sipped the last of my wine. “Some more?”
“Alas, I must go.” She stood. “With Doctor Geoffries watching my class …”
I stood, nodding sympathetically. Evaluations were never fun to prepare for. “Good luck.”
“The luck I do not need. I need more time.” She flashed a quick smile, and left me, as usual, to pay the check, which Victor presented quickly.
Then, wondering if I would find any surprises, I walked down to the post centre, my overcoat half open because it was too cold not to wear a coat and too warm to bundle up. I was resisting wearing a hat, except to church—when I went, which hadn’t been that often lately.
“No bills for ye, Doktor,” called Maurice from behind the window.
“And you’ll take all the credit?”
“You give me all the blame.”
Two advertising circulars, a reminder card from the dentist, and a single brown envelope posted in the Federal District which I did not open but thrust into my folder—those were the contents of my box.
When I got back to my office, I did open the envelope, which contained one clipping. It was the same story I had already seen in the Asten Post-Courier that morning, except that it had come from the New Amsterdam Post, and that almost certainly meant that vanBecton had planted the first story.
After gathering up yet another short test and the greenbooks for my two o’clock, I trudged through the cold wind to Smythe Hall. I had to grin as I stepped into the room just a minute before the clock chimed the hour. Every seat was filled. Clearly, the word had gotten out about my policy on missing tests, unannounced or otherwise.
“Miss Deventer, are you ready today to discuss the political basis behind the first Speaker Roosevelt’s efforts at reforestation?”
Miss Deventer swallowed. So did several others.
“I meant it, you know.” I grinned. That was one of the questions on the test, not that she had to choose that one, but the others were equally specific.
Once again I handed out greenbooks and tests, and repeated the litany about only responding to one of the essay questions. After collecting the tests fifteen minutes later, we launched into a discussion—except it was more of a lurch.
“Why did it take the federal government nearly two decades to begin enforcement of the Rivers and Harbors Act?” I pointed to Mister Reshauer.
“Uhhh …”
That brilliant answer was equaled only by Miss Desileta’s “I don’t know.”
Eventually we did have a discussion on the relationship of external diseconomies and regional political alliances to the delay in the development of the Columbian environmental ethic.
Still, by the time class was over, I had the definite feeling that an even higher percentage of the environmental politics class than the economics class was going to receive D’s.
After gathering my notes, the tests, and the greenbooks into my folder, I pulled on my overcoat and trudged back through the freezing mist to my office, nodding at Gilda while I pulled another of David’s memos from my box. This one dealt with something called graduate-level in-loading, and seemed to be an excuse for paying some faculty more for doing less. I carried everything upstairs and set out the two stacks of tests, starting to grade the morning’s environmental economics quizzes. The first five were D’s; then I finally got an honest C.
At three-twenty, I left the tests on my desk and took myself and my folder back outside and up the hill to the Physical Sciences building and Gerald’s office.
He opened the door within instants of my rapping. “I don’t like this, Johan.”
“Neither do I, but I felt you deserved to know the size of the sharks you’re fishing for.” After setting my unzipped leather folder on the corner of his desk, I leaned forward, scanning the few memos on it before pointing to a picture. “That your daughter? She’s an attractive young lady.”
As his eyes moved to the picture, I slipped a memo with Branston-Hay’s signature on it under my folder—it was only something about allocation of time on the super-speed difference engine, but the signature would do. Then I settled into the chair closest to his difference engine.
“Exactly what do you mean by all these veiled threats, Johan?” He sat in the big swivel, but only on the front edge, as if I were some form of dangerous animal. His hand brushed over his long, thin, blond and white hair, as if he were trying to recover his bald patch.
“I don’t make threats, Gerald. I’m just offering some observations.”
“Your ‘observations’ sound like threats to me.”
I leaned forward in the chair. “You know, Gerald, I wonder what your next project will be. This one is going to end rather shortly, you know?”
Branston-Hay frowned at me, as I knew he would. The on
e thing that defense contractors—even covert ones—never understand is that all projects end.
I stood and ambled over to his difference engine. “You keep your notes on this, don’t you, the ones no one else is supposed to read or know you keep?”
Even as he watched, his mouth dropping open, I sat down at the console and flipped the switches, watching as it powered up.
“Johan …” His voice was low and meant to be threatening. “No one would ever see you again if I said so.”
“Permit me a word, Gerald. First, I would assume that this office is thoroughly desnooped, and that you ensured that?”
“Of course. That technology I do know.”
“Good. Now what makes you think I would say what I just said without a reason?” I entered the sequence I needed, and tried not to grin. It just possibly might work.
“Reformulation beginning” scripted after the pointer.
I stood and walked from the console toward his desk, keeping my body between him and the screen. “I hope your desnooping was thorough. You know, your research is already being implemented.”
“They said—”
“Bother what they said. Have you noticed all the Babbage centers going up in flames? I wonder how many professors just had heart attacks, or highway accidents, or drowned in swimming or boating accidents? I’ll bet there are more than a few. And with all the religious fervor over psychic research, it’s going to be a dead end all of a sudden.”
“But Ferdinand would like to see it a dead end. He already has what he needs. So does Speaker Hartpence, and now it will be convenient for that research to stop.” Branston-Hay looked smugly at me. “And then we’ll get a new contract.”
“That brings up something else. You never told the president’s people about the disassociator, did you? You were even too timid to build it, weren’t you?”
At that point the gun came out, a very small-bore Colt, wobbling enough that I knew he’d never even practiced with it.
I stepped aside so he could see the console screen. The gun wavered, and I moved and slashed it out of his hand, but he let it fall and lunged past me. “You … you bastard! But you don’t know …”
Ghosts of Columbia Page 21
