Ghosts of Columbia

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “Johan?” Llysette did not speak until she had nearly finished her omelet and half a scone.

  “Yes.”

  “For this concert, I will need a number of things.”

  “I know. We’d agreed that we’d go down to Borkum today, do the shopping, and have dinner there.”

  She smiled.

  Even after the two years we’d known each other, Llysette still had trouble believing that men—or man, in my case—would carry out promises, despite the fact that I always tried to. Most of the time I did, and I was working on those few times when I got sidetracked.

  After I showered and dressed, and while Llysette was finishing dressing, I took the Stanley down to Vanderbraak Centre to pick up the paper and check the post. Mr. Derkin was nowhere to be seen at Samaha’s, nor was Louie.

  The post centre was another matter. I saw the unmarked brown envelope, postmarked from the Federal District, and my guts churned. I’d never wanted to see another one of those.

  Maurice grinned from the window, and I forced a smile as I thumbed through the other envelopes, including the electric bill from NBEI and the bill from New Bruges Wireline. They always arrived on the same day, without fail.

  “You always grin when the bills arrive, you reprobate,” I chastised him.

  “And you never give us credit for the good things, Herr Doktor.”

  “Such as?”

  “The chocolates from your mother and the letters from your family.”

  “Few enough those are, and why should you get the credit?”

  “You’re a hard, hard man, Doktor.” He grinned again.

  I had to smile back despite the tension that gripped me.

  Out in the Stanley, I opened the plain envelope. As I had feared, it contained only media clips, and I’d have to read them carefully to determine from their content whether they came from my former employer—the Spazi—or from the office of the President. At least, Deputy Minister vanBecton had sent his clippings under the imprint of International Import Services, PLC. That had given me some warning. The new head of Spazi operations was Deputy Minister Jerome, but I’d only met him in passing years ago. My latest separation from the Spazi had been handled through Charles Asquith, Speaker Hartpence’s top aide.

  In any case, the clips were less than good news, although I waited to read them until I parked the Stanley outside our own car barn. Llysette’s Reo was in the other side. I’d had it thoroughly overhauled and the burners tuned after we’d been married.

  I sat in the drive and read through the clippings, all from the Federal District’s Columbia Post-Dispatch:

  GREAT SALT LAKE CITY, DESERET (DNS). In presiding over the Saints’ Annual Conference on the Family, First Counselor Cannon highlighted the church’s concerns about the role of culture in developing morals: “We must provide to our youth the finest examples of culture that uphold the moral fabric of our society. Excellence in art must include moral excellence, not mere technical artistry.”

  Cannon, owner of the Deseret media empire that includes the Deseret Star, Deseret Business, and Unified Deseret VideoLink, is the youngest First Speaker of the Church of Latter-Day Saints since the founding of Deseret. He was selected as a counselor 1988, and he has been one of the Twelve Apostles since 1983.

  There was more, but it all related to the rest of the Conference on the Family and the emphasis on the need for upholding the “traditional” values, including, I suspected, that of polygamy.

  GREAT SALT LAKE CITY, DESERET (WNS). Former First Diva of old France, Llysette duBoise, will appear in place of Dame Sarah Brightman on November 23, 24, and 25. DuBoise, now a Columbian citizen and performer, is a noted academic as well as a performer… Dame Brightman was hospitalized two weeks ago with an undisclosed ailment…

  Doktor duBoise, recently married to a former Subminister of Natural Resources of the Republic of Columbia, boasts an international reputation for both her technique and her sheer vocal artistry. She performed extensively in Europe prior to the fall of France, and recent concerts in Columbia, according to Jacob Jensen, Director of Salt Palace, have confirmed that “her artistry not only remains unchallenged, but is greater than ever. We are indeed fortunate to be able to secure her performance…”

  The article ended with almost a listing of Llysette’s credentials, some of it clearly lifted from her recital program. She might be pleased to have been listed as a former First Diva, although I wasn’t sure she actually had been—unless it had been while she’d been imprisoned and tortured, simply because the others had fled or been murdered by Archduke Ferdinand’s troops.

  COLORADO JUNCTION, DESERET (RPI). Upstream from this historic Saint fortress today, Deseret’s Secretary of Resource Development christened the second phase of the Colorado Power Project, a linked series of three dams designed to provide water for the industrial development spawned by the Deseret Synthetic Fuels Corporation…

  In a prepared statement, Premier Escobar-Moire of New France stated that he was “confident” that Deseret would continue to abide by the terms of the Riverine Compact, including the provisions relating to water quality and quantity…

  “Deseret risks ecological disaster by this continued unbridled exploitation of river resources,” commented F. Henrik Habicht II, the Columbian Deputy Minister of Natural Resources, following a ministerial meeting at the Capitol… Habicht specifically highlighted the Saint diversions of the Snake River as well as the Green and Colorado rivers.

  I shook my head and went into the house and upstairs, where I handed the envelope with the clippings to Llysette. She was doing her hair. “These arrived in the post.”

  Her eyes widened as she read. “First Diva … not I. Mais, ca… That I will not deny, not now.” Then she paused and looked at me. “You said …”

  “I did. I didn’t ask for these. No one has wired me. They’re all about you, and about Deseret.” I laughed, harshly. “I guess we’ve been scrutinized a little more closely than I’d thought. You’re now national news. Perhaps you should offer a copy to Dierk.”

  “Rather I would send one to the dean.” Llysette’s eyes glittered, and I recalled a time when I’d faced that look—and a Colt-Luger—across my difference engine. Then, of course, she’d still been partially ghost-conditioned—a result of Ferdinand’s agents’ tender treatment. I’d been lucky to escape with a shoulder wound.

  “You could do that. She’d probably use it to pry funding out of someone, but you might actually benefit.” I paused. “We’ll still need to go to Asten sometime this week to start things rolling on your passport.”

  “A passport, that would be nice…”

  “You’re a citizen now, and after that story, you won’t have any trouble.”

  “That I should not.” She frowned, then pirouetted in the gray woolen suit with the bright green blouse.

  “You look wonderful.”

  “Good. I am almost ready.”

  While Llysette finished straightening up the bedroom and selecting jewelry to wear, I went down to the study and sat in front of my SII custom electrofluidic difference engine to squeeze in a few minutes on the business of teaching. I called up the text of the Environmental Politics 2B midterm exam that I’d given the previous spring. The second essay question had been a disaster: “Discuss the rationale for Speaker Aspinall’s decision to impose excise taxes on internal combustion engines and petroleum derivatives.”

  The answers had been dismal, ranging from increased revenue to political payoffs—all general and none showing any understanding of either the readings or the class discussion. I’d used a lot of red ink, and I wondered if it had just been me.

  It all seemed simple enough to me. Why was it so hard for them to understand that the fuel taxes weren’t enacted for either environmental or revenue reasons—but for strategic ones? Speaker Aspinall never met a tree he didn’t first consider as lumber or a coal mine that he didn’t embrace. He’d pushed the taxes because Ferdinand and the elder Maximilian—not the i
diot son who was deGaulle’s puppet—would have strangled Columbia if we’d ever become too dependent on foreign oil and because it was clear Deseret wasn’t about to ship its excess oil and the liquid fuels from its synthetic fuels program to Columbia, no matter what the price, not when New France would pay more and allow transhipment on the Eccles Pipeline for sale to Chung Kuo.

  Less than a generation later, my Dutch students were claiming the taxes had been needed for revenue when Aspinall’s government had run enormous surpluses.

  I looked out the window into the gray and icy Saturday morning, listening as Llysette came down the stairs.

  “Johan, a steamer arrives.”

  “Could you get it? I’ll be there in a minute.” I saved the question for later thought and flicked off the difference engine.

  “Mais oui. That I can do.” I could hear the door open. “Yes?”

  A feeling like doom looked over me, along with a sense that the part of my soul that was Carolynne clawed in frustration to get out. With that feeling, I ran toward the front door, knocking back the desk chair and literally careening off the wall.

  Llysette was faster. The heavy door with its ancient, almost silvered leaded glass pane shuddered closed, simultaneously with the thin whining of a ghosting device that ripped at my soul, trying to tear it away from my physical body. The whining died into silence, and we were both still whole, unzombied, perhaps because of the leaded glass or the door’s thickness or both … or our previous encounters with ghosting technology.

  I held her for a moment, and she held me—as we both shuddered.

  “That … like the awful … what …”

  “I know.” And I did. The feeling was so similar to the time that I had almost used the ghost disassociator Bruce had built for me on Llysette—except the lodestone and the mirror had meant we’d both got a dosage—ghost-possessed, or enhanced. But the soul-shivering and shuddery feelings were the same.

  I eased to the kitchen and peered out the side window.

  A man stood there blank-faced—zombied. The dark gray steamer stood unattended in the drive.

  We waited.

  He stood—expressionless, still holding what looked to be a large box of chocolates.

  After even more time, I went back to the door and opened it. The clean-shaven and dark-eyed fellow was clearly a zombie, his soul lifted by the device I knew remained inside the pseudo-box of chocolates.

  “I’ll take that,” I said quietly. “Who are you?” I eased the chocolate box from his hands, the box that held some form of the technology that could tear souls from still-living humans.

  “Joshua Korfman, sir.” His voice held that flat zombie tone.

  “Was anyone else with you?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Do you have a gun?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’ll take that, too.” I paused, not really wanting my prints on it. “Set it down there.”

  The gun was’ a standard Colt, not a Colt-Luger. I could sense Llysette’s wince behind me. The last thing—the very last thing—I wanted to do was wire Hans Waetjen about another zombie at our house. But there wasn’t much choice, not as I saw it.

  “Would you call Chief Waetjen?” I asked Llysette.

  “I should call?”

  “Do you know what he would say if I called?”

  “That I can guess. The chief … what should I tell him?”

  “The truth … just not all of it. Tell him that the man raised something and you slammed the door and called and I came running. Then we waited.”

  “And the box?”

  “The box is something that the chief doesn’t need to know about. The gun is sufficient.”

  So Llysette called, and the three of us waited … after I tucked the box away in the hidden wall chamber under the lodestone in the study.

  The chief arrived in the black Watch car, along with Constable Gerhardt, he of the ample mustaches and thin, always-cheerful face.

  “Doktor Eschbach.” The square-faced and gray-haired chief snorted. “Why do strange things always happen around you? Why couldn’t you have retired somewhere else?”

  “This is the family home,” I pointed out, although it had only been in the family for two generations before me, and that was a short tradition compared to many in Vanderbraak Centre. “Where else would I go?”

  “Anywhere,” snorted the chief before he turned to the zombie. “What were you doing here?”

  “A man gave me five hundred dollars to kill the people who lived here. Something happened.”

  “What happened?” asked Waetjen.

  “I don’t know. I remember reaching for my gun, and she slammed the door. That was when it happened.”

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know.” Korfman’s face and voice remained expressionless.

  “Disassociative ghosting,” I suggested. “Strong mental block against murder, but not conscious.”

  “Eschbach … I know about that.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Did you ever see these people before?”

  “No.”

  “How did you know whom to shoot?”

  “The man showed me a picture.”

  That bothered me—more than a little—since there weren’t any pictures of the two of us together, except for the wedding pictures, and we’d given none to anyone, except for the pair we’d sent to my aunt and mother in Schenectady. They’d come to the wedding, but the pictures weren’t ready until later. But someone had a picture.

  Waetjen glanced toward me.

  “There aren’t any pictures except our wedding pictures, and no one has any except us and my mother.”

  “There wasn’t one in the paper?”

  I nodded. “I hadn’t thought about that. It wasn’t very good.”

  “Good enough for this.” The chief glared at me, as if it were my fault that someone had been dispatched to kill us, then motioned to Gerhardt. “Drive his steamer down to the post. Use your gloves and don’t touch anything. The wheel won’t have any prints but his anyway.”

  We watched as the two steamers departed.

  After the chief left, I turned to my dark-haired soprano. “I’d like to invite my friend Bruce up for dinner as soon as we can. Would that be all right with you? You don’t have any night rehearsals yet.”

  “Mais oui … and you think he could help with … what here has happened?”

  “I want him to look at that device, and I’m afraid that they’ll be watching me more closely.” I shrugged. “I don’t even know who ‘they’ are.” I thought about the clippings from the Federal District. “With some of those clippings I’ve received, it could be any one of a number of different groups involved.” What I didn’t say was that my past experience had taught me that once one group got involved, so did another, and often another.

  “Johan … with you, nothing it is simple.”

  I bent over and kissed her cheek. “Nor with you, my dear.”

  I picked up the handset and wired Bruce. It seemed like I always wired or saw Bruce when I needed technical support. Then, he’d been the only one I’d been able to trust when I’d been doing fieldwork and he had been one of the designers in Spazi technical support. He’d been smart and left the Spazi early. Because of Elspeth’s—my first wife’s—medical condition, I’d stayed … and paid dearly. And in the end, the bullets meant for me had taken both Waltar and Elspeth.

  “LBI Difference Designers,” answered Bruce.

  “Doktor Leveraal, this is your friendly environmental professor.”

  “I should have guessed. It’s been one of those days.” There was a pause. “What can I do for you this time? No more insurance, please?”

  Bruce remained an “insurer” of sorts, since he had all the files on the ghosting-destruction research project that had almost led to my and Llysette’s deaths—along with a large number of other unexplained deaths, zombies, and “accidents” across Columbia, especially in the Federal Dis
trict and in Vanderbraak Centre. He also had the files on my not-so-well-known technology that could replicate the electric free fields that defined a ghost. Meddling with that, when Llysette had tried to kill me with her Colt-Lugar, had led to our own “ghost possession.”

  “A dinner invitation, for you to meet my lovely bride.”

  “That makes you sound almost human, Johan. I won’t ask any more. When?”

  “I’d hoped this week. Llysette doesn’t have night rehearsals until the week after, and then it’s going to get hectic. She’s been asked to do a big concert in Deseret—Great Salt Lake City.”

  “You’re going with her.”

  “There isn’t any choice. She’s female, and they’re Saints.”

  Beside me, Llysette grimaced.

  “Tuesday, Thursday, or Friday. Monday and Wednesday nights I’m the one who stays late.”

  “Tuesday?”

  “I was afraid of that. I did want to meet the lady, and your cuisine is superb, but I worry about the technical details.”

  “What can I say?” I temporized, knowing everything I said was probably being recorded somewhere.

  “I’ll see you on Tuesday. What time?”

  “Seven. I could make it later.”

  “Seven is fine. Have a pleasant weekend, Johan.”

  “I will. And thank you.”

  “Not yet.” With a laugh he was gone.

  I set down the wireset and turned to Llysette. “We might as well go down to Borkum and go shopping, as we had planned.”

  “After this?” asked Llysette. “After someone, they wanted to turn us into ghosts?”

  “Do you have a better idea to get our minds off this? We’ve done what we can right now.”

  After a moment, she gave me a rueful headshake and nodded.

  What else could we do?

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Marie Rijn shooed us out of our own house that Tuesday, but I was glad she had decided to stay on as my housecleaner, even after Llysette and had married, because she kept it Dutch-spotless, and for me or Llysette to have done the cleaning would have taken too much time out of schedules that were already too crowded—and getting worse.