Ghosts of Columbia

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  The lights went out, of course, even as the disassociator slewed sideways at the mirror and the huge lodestone behind it.

  But even in the dimness I could see the stiffening of Llysette’s face, the faint flash of white as something—something vital?—left.

  “Johan. Why have you killed me?”

  The dead tone in the voice hammered at me in the darkness, and I looked at the barrel of the Colt.

  Crack!

  Her hand dropped, and another line of fire went through me, like the blade of a knife. Her Colt dropped on the floor with a muffled thump.

  “No … no …” Llysette’s cry was more of a plea than a command. “Please, no … NO!!!”

  I lost my grip on the disassociator, and I half tripped and half fell into darkness, my hands skidding across the carpet.

  That darkness was punctuated with images: Elspeth lying pale between paler sheets and choking up blood; Waltar’s closed coffin; two zombie watch officers looking at me; Ralston sprawled across his steps; Gertrude sobbing at the end of the last act of Heinrich Verrückt; Llysette’s pale face and deader voice.

  And the images spun, twirled on the spindle of that single line spoken by the caricature ghost of justice: “Justice must be done. Justice must be done.”

  I lay there for a long time. A very long time.

  “Johan … Johan …”

  In the flickering light of a single candle, Llysette was bent over me, tears dropping across my face and bare shoulder, shivering even as she bound my wound. I did not recall turning over, and I shuddered. My shoulder seared with the movement.

  “Johan, do not leave us …” Another tear cascaded across my cheek.

  Us? My head ached. Why had I done it all? Had I really had to kill Warbeck? Or zombie all those people, especially the watch officers? But they would have killed me, and their guns had been ready. Why hadn’t I just told Llysette I loved her? Did I, or had it just been sexual attraction?

  A stabbing sensation, almost burning as much as the gunshot wound, throbbed in my skull, behind my eyes. My head burned, ached, and the images flared …

  … standing on a varnished wooden stage, limelights flooding past me, looking out into a square-faced audience, seeing not a single smile …

  … the glint of an oil lamp on cold steel, and the heavy knife slicing through my shoulder, once, then again, and a man wrestling the blade away, trying to rise, watching blood well across a pale nightgown …

  … drifting through an empty house, watching, waiting …

  … a blond boy sitting before the bookshelves, slowly turning pages, his eyes flickering eagerly across the words, my eyes straining to follow …

  … a man winding copper wire, glancing nervously toward the setting sun, fingers deftly working …

  … a woman staring at me, and saying, “Leave the boy alone, or you’ll regret it. You understand, ghost hussy?”

  … drifting through an empty house, watching, waiting, pausing by the covered shelves in the study …

  … a sandy-haired man standing for hours, looking blankly out a window, then burying his head in his hands …

  … listening to the sandy-haired man saying, “I know you’re a ghost, but using songs as riddles is hard on me. I’m tired. Can’t you say what you mean?” and singing back words he could only hear as cold words, “Ne point passer!”—feeling warmth, love, and anger, all at once …

  The images kept slashing into me, like dreams, half pleasant, half nightmares, and above it all that same statement hammered at me: “Justice must be done. Justice must be done.”

  Had anything I’d done been just? Yes … no … yes … no … both sides of everything whirled in my head, and each side drew blood.

  The blackness or the words, or both, hammered me down again.

  Sometime later I swallowed, my mouth dry, and opened my eyes. Llysette sat beside me on the floor, her eyes clinched tight, one hand on mine, and I tried to speak, and had no voice, only questions. She looked at me, and more tears fell, but she trembled, and did not speak, only wept and held my hand.

  Why had I shut Judith and Eric out? Why had I used poor Carolynne like some experimental animal? And Branston-Hay, had I driven him to his death? And pushed the Spazi into burning his home? Guilt, like a breaker, crashed over me, and I dropped back into darkness.

  Was this ghosting? Was I becoming a ghost myself, or a zombie? Why couldn’t I move? Was this death?

  Llysette was still there when I awoke the second—or was it the third—time, and the candle was still flickering, though so low that wax lay piled on the desk. I was wrapped in blankets.

  I wondered why a clean gunshot wound that hadn’t shattered bone or an artery—I’d have been dead long since—had floored me. I also wondered why she hadn’t shot me dead, or called the Spazi and revealed what she knew.

  Instead, she bent down and kissed my forehead, which didn’t make any sense, not after she’d pulled the trigger in the first place. But she was trembling, and her face was blotchy, and for the first time she looked far older than her age.

  My own vision blurred—with tears, relief. Was I still there? Was there a chance?

  “Johan …” She shook her head, then closed her eyes for a moment, squeezing my hand gently. “Please, stay with us.”

  Some of the pieces fit. In the mess, I’d fired the disassociator right into the lodestone behind the mirror, and that had disassociated something from Llysette. I’d seen something. That I knew. But I didn’t know what else that might have done or added to my own disassociation. I had suffered some form of psychic disassociation, perhaps extreme guilt.

  And I’d gotten some of Carolynne—probably the duplicate version, although I didn’t understand how so comparatively few code lines held so much. Or was it only a framework, and were ghosts, even artificial ones, somehow creations of a merciful god merely tied to biologic or logic codes?

  But if Llysette hadn’t gotten the integrity program, then why was she taking care of me? Why was she so upset? And why was she alive when her face had been so dead and she had cried that I had killed her?

  I looked up. The difference engine was off, and there were no ghosts in the darkness.

  Llysette’s voice trembled. “Loved you, she did.” She started to sing, brokenly, “Put out my eyes … can see you still … slam ear … can hear you yet … without feet can go to you at will …”

  Then she just sobbed.

  I did manage to struggle into a sitting position and hold my poor singer, even with the burning in my shoulder and my eyes.

  “Loved you, she did, poor ghost,” she sniffed. “And I also, but not enough.” She sniffed again, trying to blot tears that would not stop and streaked mascara and makeup across her face. “Now, two parts, they make a whole … and we both love you, and you must not leave us, not when she loved so much.”

  The words bubbled up on my tongue, but I could only speak them, not sing them. “I grieved … so much. I saw you pale and fearing. That was in dream, and your soul rang. All softly my soul sounded with it, and both souls sang themselves: I suffered. Then peace came deep in me …”

  “And in me,” Llysette sang, a lullaby and a love song. “I lay in the silver heaven between dream and day …”

  She began to cry again, and so did I, for I, too, was whole, out of many parts, as we shared the song I had never known till then, knowing that Carolynne had given us many songs.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Things don’t ever end quite the way you thought.

  Llysette and I are getting married. In the Dutch Reformed Church in Vanderbraak Centre. Klaus Esterhoos deserves that much, at least. Eric and Judith will be here. So will my mother and Anna, and, of course, Carolynne will be with both Llysette and me, in a way, and there’s no way either one of us can repay her … except maybe by trying to do it right this time.

  We aren’t inviting David or the dean, and we’ve avoided the trap David set, because I just told Llysette first—like she a
sked me—and we laughed.

  “Such a small man he is. He and the dean, they deserve each other.”

  “Of course they do.”

  “Their own happiness, that will be hard for them.” But her voice was thoughtful, not hard, and she bent over and kissed me.

  “And our happiness?”

  “Best we keep it, dear man. The price for all, it was high.”

  I squeezed her hand, and she squeezed mine. “But they don’t know that.”

  “Non. They, they will live where we once did, in a shallow sea.”

  And they will, in a sea of illusion, where they believe, as I did, that everything I did was for a good cause. People like that always do, and despite my best efforts with Babbage code, there was really no way to create a ghost of justice and mercy. What I had gotten was only a caricature of justice. Then, that’s what most people want—caricatures.

  We’d thought about moving back to the Federal District of Columbia, with all of Bruce’s gadgets, and giving lots and lots of dinner parties, small intimate ones where Llysette sang. Despite Judith’s words about honesty, there was still one problem—my “insurance” policies would probably have been invalidated if our profiles got too high.

  So … if Mahomet can’t go to the mountain, the mountain has to come to Mahomet. Even all the way to New Bruges.

  Llysette’s singing is a key part, of course. She can really bring tears to people’s eyes now, especially to mine, and I’m sure that, between the two of us, we can actually raise money for a new performing arts hall.

  Bruce and I have refined his gadgets so that we can now project small voices—call them angels. It’s not possession, not by a long shot. It just gets their attention. And then Llysette sings. Music—the right music to receptive ears—can do much more than soothe the savage beast. I didn’t even have to twist Bruce’s arms, not too much, anyway. But I think he really wishes we were moving.

  You ask, is it ethical? I can only say that if I survived two ghostly possessions, then they can handle a few voices in concert. Call it an examination of conscience. Are we playing gods? Of course, but people always have, and refused to admit it. For the first time in my life, I’m being honest. So is Llysette.

  She sings, and I teach. After all, what else can two academics do in up-country New Bruges?

  Our daughter will be named Carolynne, but she won’t ever know the details, or the reason, and neither will Speaker Hartpence, nor President Armstrong. But we always will.

  The Ghost of the Revelator

  For Bruce, and for Carol Ann,

  who made this possible

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Late-October New Bruges drizzle—more liquid ice than rain on that Friday night—clicked off the Stanley’s thermal finish all the way down from the house into Vanderbraak Centre. Beside me, Llysette sat, drawn into herself, as she always was before she performed.

  When you’re a professor and retired spy married to a former diva of old France who’s been the toast of a Europe now crumbled under Ferdinand’s boots, you always hope for peace and quiet. Especially when you’ve finally turned the disaster of two ghosts in your life into mere inconvenience. And sometimes you get it, but this time even the ice was only the calm before a bigger storm.

  “The ice rains … at times, Johan, would that we lived where I did not need two coats and wool garments.”

  “I know.” I’d learned early to say nothing controversial before she sang. “I was thinking that over midterms we might take a vacation in Saint-Martine. There’s a weekly dirigible from Asten.”

  “I will not endure that long a time.” Llysette shivered. “And tonight, they will applaud like cows. For what do I sing?”

  “Because you’re a singer. Singers sing. You sing magnificently—”

  “Once I did. Now … I do not know.”

  “You’ll be magnificent. I know it.” I eased the steamer to a stop right opposite the side door to the old Physical Training building, set the brake, and scurried around with the black umbrella to escort Llysette up and inside. I kissed her on the cheek, again. “You’ll be fine.”

  “Fine is for gold, Johan.”

  “You’ll sing magnificently.”

  “We shall see.” She headed up the half-flight of steps to the practice room where her accompanist, Johanna, waited. She’d already warmed up at the house on the Haaren console grand piano. I’d purchased that for her with part of my “bonus” for resolving the governmental ghost crisis. Given what I’d put Llysette through, she deserved the piano and more. Given what Archduke Ferdinand of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and my own beloved country of Columbia had put her through, even a concert Steinbach wouldn’t have been the first installment on true repayment to her, but I was trying.

  I went back to move the Stanley into a more legitimate spot in the car park, getting even wetter in the process because it was about four times as far from where I parked to the front of the Music and Theatre building.

  “Good evening, Doktor Eschbach.” One of Llysette’s students was handing out programs, but I didn’t recall her name—Emelia van—something or other. Then, most of the students at Vanderbraak State University were from New Bruges. Most had a predominantly Dutch heritage—and that Dutch reserve that made Llysette’s teaching an exercise as much in trying to bring emotion to singing as to develop the basics of music.

  “Good evening.”

  To my surprise, the foyer was relatively crowded, and I turned toward the theatre itself, but didn’t get that far.

  “Doktor Eschbach! Doktor Eschbach …” Katrinka Er Recchus had the kind of voice that penetrated, but I supposed that kind of penetration was sometimes useful for the dean of the university. Her bright and overly broad smile was dwarfed by the expanse of a white lace collar that topped her too ample figure. Although the auburn hair was faultless, I suspected the original shade had been mousy brown, but there was nothing mousy about her—ratlike, perhaps, but not mousy.

  “Dean Er Recchus.” I bowed to her and then to Alois, her even more rotund husband, a retired major in the New Bruges guard, as was obvious from the squared-off nature of his white goatee, the guard pin in his lapel, and the dark gray cravat and suit. He returned the bow without speaking.

  “I had heard that your presentation on environmental politics and policies was masterful,” the dean continued. “Doktor Doniger was most complimentary.”

  “I’m glad David was pleased.” Doktor David Doniger, my chairman and head of the newly reformed Department of Political and Natural Resource Sciences, was usually a pain in the posterior.

  “Johan.” Her voice lowered, but not the overpowering quantity of that floral fragrance that some vain and aging women immerse themselves in under the delusion that olfactory stupefaction will result in visual illusion. “The vanEmsdens were so pleased that you are the first professor to occupy their endowed chair. Peter was particularly supportive of your past achievements and your dedication to Columbia. He served in the Singapore incident, in the Republic Air Corps, as you did. I am so glad that all such unpleasantnesses are behind us now.” The bright smile indicated that any such unpleasantness had best remain behind us all.

  The Singapore mess, when Chung Kuo had devastated the city, had been well before my time, and Peter vanEmsden and I had merely passed pleasantries at the ceremony where I’d been installed as the first vonBehn Professor of Applied Politics and Ecology. I doubted most knew the ironies involved with my selection to establish the formal legacy of Elysia vanEmsden’s father’s forebear, and I wasn’t about to explain. After all, how could I—a spy carrying on the legacy of another spy?

  “I am delighted that they were pleased.”

  Alois merely nodded, as he did frequently when with the dean.

  When I finally entered the theatre that had been the sole lecture hall of the old Physical Training center, I checked the program. At least Llysette no longer had to resort to under-the-table handouts from the Austro-Hungarian Cultural Foundation to
make ends meet. Tucked in among the recital pieces, besides An die Nacht and Barber’s Monastic Songs, was Anne Boleyn’s aria from Heinrich Verrückt. Llysette had wanted to do that aria at her recital the fall before but had done the Mozart Anti-Mass instead. She’d needed the stipend from the Cultural Foundation. The recital had been the night Miranda Miller, the piano professor, had been murdered, and that had started Llysette’s and my adventures with several different covert operations, including those of my former employer, the Sedition Prevention and Security Service, more widely and less popularly known as the Spazi.

  I shivered a touch. The last thing Llysette and I needed was anything more along those lines.

  The house was almost full, with nearly all of the 450 seats filled nearly a half hour before Llysette was due to sing. I paused for a moment before I sat down, about halfway back, on the aisle, still surveying the audience.

  In about the tenth row, in the middle, sat a bearded man in dark clothes, not the dark clothes of the Dutch, or even of a conservative southerner, but different, somehow, almost out of the last century. Not too far from the stranger sat Dierk Geoffries, Llysette’s chair. On the far side I even saw Marie Rijn, who cleaned the house for us, along with an older man I guessed had to be her husband.

  After I seated myself on one of the all too inflexible Dutch colonial hardwood seats, I glanced back at the bearded man. The seats on either side of him had remained empty, even as the house filled.

  The lights dimmed.

  Llysette stepped onstage, dark hair upswept, almost imperial in the shimmering green gown, and I forgot about the bearded man.

  Johanna’s fingers caressed the keys of the concert Steinbach, and the sound shimmered into the evening. Then Llysette began, a selection from Perkins, not one from a Vondel opera.

  Llysette sang beautifully. She always had, but now there was something else … even more of a spark or a lambent flame.

  She had the entire audience, even the stolid Dutch burghers, standing and yelling after she finished the encore—something from an opera I’d never heard: Susannah. And she smiled back at them. The other thing I’d never heard in Vanderbraak Centre was so much applause from the normally restrained Dutch.