Ghosts of Columbia

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “To France perhaps we should send them?”

  I laughed. Their questions would have them in Ferdinand’s concentration camps—except he called them relocation and training camps. That or selectively part-zombied and turned into killing machines for the invasion of Britain that was sure to come in another decade … or less. Unless Ferdinand decided to push over the crumbling remnants of the once-great Romanov dynasty in Russia. But no one ever beat the Russian winter, or the Finnish winter, and most of the Scandinavians were building redoubts in every rocky hill and fjord and peak north of the Baltic. The Finns had turned Vyborg into an armory in the Autumn War and continued to upgrade it against the Hapsburgs.

  “Oh. Here’s the invitation.” I handed her the heavy envelope.

  For a moment, she just looked. Then she opened it. “A personal note there is.” Her eyes brightened, and I could see the hint of tears.

  “You deserve it. You deserved it years ago.”

  “Johan, what we deserve we do not always receive. Because of you, I receive. Not because—”

  “You wouldn’t have those invitations if you weren’t the best.”

  “Non. C’est vrai.” Her green eyes were deep, almost two shades of green simultaneously, as she turned to me. “I would not have them save for you. We know that, and I am thankful to you, and angered at the way the world is. We cannot change what is.” She leaned over and hugged me, then kissed my cheek.

  I eased the Stanley out of the car park, around the town square, slowly, because McArdles’ was crowded with late-day grocery shoppers, and then over the Wijk bridge and up Deacon’s Lane to the now-spotless house.

  Marie had even set the dining room table and left a steaming apple pie.

  I had to scurry to get dinner started, while Llysette assisted with setting out such details as wineglasses and serving bowls. I’d decided on something relatively simple—a spinach linguine pasta with a chicken fettuccine sauce, hot rolls, and the salad.

  Before Bruce arrived, I took a few minutes to close the study draperies and remove the ersatz chocolate box from the hidden wall compartment. After I set it on the ancient desk, I went to look for the Watch report that I’d pried out of Chief Waetjen. I thought I’d left it in a file in the second drawer—on top—but it wasn’t there. I checked the third drawer, then went back to the stack in the second drawer. It was there, about four files down. I shook my head. Even my memory was going. With the sound of something boiling too violently, I dropped the file next to the difference screen and scurried back to the kitchen.

  Even while I chopped the roasted almonds for the curried wine vinegar dressing for the salad, I continued to have less than sanguine feelings about Llysette’s invitation to Deseret, despite all the papers—and despite the retainer cheque. But what could I say? “Turn down a five-thousand-dollar retainer; turn away from the recognition you deserve?”

  Bruce arrived after dark, well after dark, in his ancient Olds ragtop, and I thought I could hear the beating sound of tattered canvas. My imagination, doubtless.

  As he entered, Bruce immediately bowed to Llysette, offering a warm smile. “At last, the beautiful chanteuse of whom I have heard so much.”

  She blushed. “I have heard much of you.”

  “Try not to believe too much of it.”

  I took his coat. “Dinner will be ready in just a few minutes after I put in the pasta.”

  Bruce looked at me. “So, Johan, business before or after dinner?”

  I shrugged. “I’d thought before.”

  The three of us went into the study.

  “There it is.” I gestured to the box.

  “What is?”

  I realized I’d never explained. “A gentleman showed up at the door with this for Llysette. She slammed the door in his face, and he turned into a zombie as a result of the gadgetry inside. I wanted your opinion.” I paused. “I did take the liberty of disconnecting the power.”

  “Thoughtful of you, Johan.” Bruce eased open the box and peered and nodded and then fingered his mostly black beard. He took out a small screwdriver, the clip kind, from his shirt pocket and fiddled slightly. Then he nodded and straightened.

  “It’s the same thing as your first gadget to separate soul from body and then destroy the spirit or ghost. But it’s a different approach. I prefer your design. It’s a great deal more stable than this.”

  It hadn’t been my design, but one I’d stolen from the difference engine of the late Professor Branston-Hay before his untimely death at the hands of the Spazi covert branch. At least, that was my surmise, although the official cause of death had been a faulty steam control valve in his antique Ford. His house—and all his backup disks—had burned in an electrical fire right after the funeral. So the files and designs I had were among the few left, and probably highly illegal after Speaker Hartpence’s announced decision to ban all research and development on ghost-related technologies.

  “Good,” I murmured. While not relieved, I was happy to know that my surmises had been correct and that Llysette and I hadn’t panicked at nothing. I picked up the folder. “Here’s the Watch report. It doesn’t say anything.”

  Bruce scanned it quickly. “No, it doesn’t.”

  “I thought so, but you have a more skeptical mind than I do.”

  “Me? How could you think that?”

  “Experience.” I laughed, and so did he.

  “Is that all?” He held up a hand. “Foolish of me to suppose that, of course.”

  “Actually, I have a request of sorts. You remember that gadget you built me, two of them actually, that preceded the perturbation replicator and resembled this in function?”

  There was a long silence. Bruce glanced from me to Llysette.

  I nodded. “She knows.” Llysette definitely knew about both the ghost-creation technology and the so-called perturbation replicator, or de-ghoster, although I couldn’t remember exactly how I’d come up with the name.

  “Those … ah, yes. Johan, I had hoped you would get beyond playthings once you married, that kind of gimmickry, I meant.”

  “You know that Llysette has been offered a concert engagement in Great Salt Lake City; one of the conditions, since she is female, is that her husband or other legal guardian accompany her.”

  “You are skeptical?”

  “She has since received an invitation to perform at the Presidential Palace, and I have received several unsolicited materials that could be construed as background briefing materials.”

  Bruce held up his hand. “That’s enough. More I don’t need to know. I’m perfectly capable of creating my own problems. That I can do without assistance—”

  “I was wondering if there might be any way to package one of those toys into separate components of an innocuous nature and yet be able to reassemble it into a toy—smaller than the original but equally effective for personal meetings, if you will.”

  “Johan … I rather like the insurance business better than any new ventures, and you know how I feel about insurance.”

  I almost smiled wryly. Bruce didn’t like at all the fact that he was one of the two individuals who’d have to release all my forbidden technology if anything happened to me—my insurance, I hoped, against an untimely and early death. “I understand. Can you look into it?”

  “How soon? Forget that.” He shook his head. “It was a foolish question. I’ll wire you tomorrow with an estimate.”

  “I appreciate it. Now … I think we should have dinner. I have some very good Californian wines, a Sebastopol you should enjoy.”

  “I always enjoy good wine … and beautiful women.” He nodded at Llysette.

  “Careful there,” I said with a laugh.

  “With you, Johan, I would always be careful. But I can look and appreciate your taste, and your luck.” He smiled gently.

  Llysette blushed again—more than I’d seen since I’d known her. Carolynne?

  I eased the pasta into the big kettle and then brought out the 1982 Sebast
opol, around its peak, I thought, and filled the glasses. “We can sit down.”

  “A toast to your upcoming performances,” offered Bruce.

  I lifted my glass, and, after a moment, so did Llysette.

  “This is a beautiful old house,” Bruce said after taking a sip from the wine.

  “We’ve made some changes, and there will be more.”

  Llysette nodded emphatically, but she could have any changes she wanted except in the study.

  “Don’t take away the atmosphere,” Bruce cautioned.

  “That, we could not do. Mais non.”

  I knew the word “we” referred to more than the two of us, but there was no reason to explain. Who would have understood?

  I had to get the pasta and drain it before tossing everything together and serving it, with the rolls. “It’s simple.”

  “He does nothing in the kitchen simple,” said Llysette.

  “She sings nothing in the theatre simple,” I countered.

  “I know enough to know that neither of you is simple in any way. Johan always said he was simple. He’s simple only in the fact that quiet waters are deep and dangerous.”

  Llysette laughed softly.

  “So is she,” I pointed out.

  “Like I said … ,” offered Bruce ambiguously before taking a sip of the wine.

  I offered the rolls to Llysette, then to Bruce, and then handed him the serving platter.

  “How do you find New Bruges … and teaching?” asked Bruce. “Is it that much different?”

  “New Bruges … it is colder than France, and the people, they keep more to themselves.” Llysette lifted her shoulders, then dropped them. “Teaching …”

  “Is hard,” I finished the sentence.

  “Tres difficile, quelquefois … the simplest of matters, and they look as though two heads I had. I cannot do my best if accompany them I must. Do they find an accompanist? Mais non! They whimper about how their funds are short and how their lives are hard.”

  “I can see that you are less than impressed,” offered Bruce.

  “Ferdinand’s prisons they have not experienced,” answered Llysette, pausing for a sip of the Sebastopol. “Work, travail vrai, they do not comprehend. To find an accompanist? Is that so difficult? To learn the notes?”

  “Anything is hard if one doesn’t work at it,” Bruce suggested.

  How well I knew that, and I nodded. Even in the simplest of books, if something did not happen to be explained in two-syllable words, or less, or if they had to think, even in novels, I suspected, they were baffled and claiming that someone had to explain. Life never worked that way, I had found. So had Llysette.

  “Mais oui. But still they whimper.”

  “Some always will,” I suggested. “But you have some good students.”

  “Marlena … a joy she is … and Jamella … she studies so hard.” Llysette smiled faintly. “The good ones, they are few.”

  “That’s true in anything.”

  “Good pasta, Johan,” said Bruce. “After all these years, I finally get to sample your cooking.”

  “Thank you. You will more,” I promised. “Even without agendas.”

  The slightest trace of a frown creased his forehead before he asked, “Why did you decide to bless me this year?”

  I shrugged, not willing to tell him that ghosts of joy and justice and mercy did have an effect. Those I had saddled myself with inadvertently were quietly making me a slightly better person. “It seemed like a good idea, even if you are wary of things that seem like good ideas.”

  That got a laugh. For a time we ate silently. Outside, the cold wind whistled gently and one of the shutters rattled.

  “There will be a time when someone needs a ghost … badly.” Bruce raised his glass of the 1982 Sebastopol, then took a healthy sip. “And I don’t want to be around when it happens.”

  “You, why would you be around?” asked Llysette. “Ghosts, you have said you avoid them.”

  “Avoid them. What ever gave you that idea? It couldn’t be that I never visited Johan until this venerable and ancient dwelling was no longer spectrally inhabited?” Bruce grinned.

  Llysette and I smiled back and then at each other. What else could we do? After the fact, it was amusing, not that it had been at the time. Neither Llysette nor I had ever mentioned the details of poor Carolynne’s displacement to our own souls. How could we? How could we tell the world that she’d shot me, under a compulsion from Ferdinand’s selective soul-sifting technology? Or that I’d turned all my ghost-creation and de-destruction gadgets on her, except a leaded mirror had skewed everything and dumped the real ghost of Carolynne into Llysette’s halfshattered soul and a copy, as well as a ghost that was a caricature of justice and mercy, into mine?

  All the world of New Bruges and particularly the enclave that was Vanderbraak Centre knew was that Johan Eschbach’s family home was no longer haunted, and a good thing it was, too, now that the black sheep had finally married the French soprano. She might be a foreigner, that Llysette duBoise, and it might have taken a bullet in his shoulder to drive out the family ghost, but he’d finally seen the light.

  I almost laughed—it had been a lot more complicated than that, and Bruce was right to worry about ghost creation. I still had the equipment he had created that had saddled me with a simplified version of both Carolynne and a ghost of justice. I was still coming to terms with those forms of possession, but at least it hadn’t gone the other way and left me a zombie.

  “You two … in the Spazi … one could not believe it today,” offered Llysette.

  “They make offers that are difficult to refuse,” Bruce pointed out wryly. “If one wishes to work in any high-level position later.”

  “And how is that so different from Ferdinand?” she asked.

  “Most of the time,” Bruce answered, “the Spazi is content with a few years of your life, and they don’t tell you what to think, just what to do.”

  “My life they have asked years of, also.”

  “That’s past.” I hoped it was past. At least she could now perform anywhere in Columbia.

  “To many years of rewarding song.” Bruce lifted his glass again.

  That was something I definitely would drink to, and I lifted my glass as well. “To song and singer.” I reached under the table and squeezed Llysette’s thigh just above the knee.

  That got me a shy and sidelong smile, and a sense of warmth.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  After my early wirecall to Harlaan Oakes with Llysette’s two songs, Wednesday found us in Asten, at the Federal building, and the less said the better about the parking in that convoluted city. The only place we ran into no lines was in the passport office itself.

  It was almost as if they were expecting us. They even insisted that, as my spouse, Llysette receive a diplomatic passport—since they had issued one to me when I’d been Subminister for Environmental Protection … and let me keep it. Having matching passports with the heavy green covers and the gold stripes offered an additional touch of class on someone’s part. The fact that I didn’t know whose part twisted my guts more than a little.

  We were happy to leave, and even the congested streets of Asten were a relief, despite the excess of dark black steamers that reminded me of the high-tech trupps that controlled the south side around the diminishing back bay.

  I took a deep breath once we were clear of the verge-on-verge towns that clustered around Asten and once the Stanley settled into a high-speed glide on the relatively open highway north toward Lochmere.

  “You’re not only a confirmed Columbian citizen, but you have a passport as well.”

  “A diplomatic passport—and a year ago they could not find my residence forms.” Llysette provided a sound halfway between a snort and a sniff. “Why a diplomatic passport?”

  Because that meant that Columbia could scream louder if anything happened to us and because it meant someone expected something to happen. “You are a cultural diplomat, of
sorts.” My internal ghost of honesty and justice compelled me to add more. “And someone is worried that something might happen. I don’t know what.”

  “My life I thought would be boring in New Bruges. It has not been so.”

  “There are times I wish it were less exciting.” Then, I was beginning to realize that I was never going to escape my past—nor was Llysette.

  “Johan?”

  “Yes?”

  “The zombie who died—was he sent to kill me?”

  “I don’t know.” I eased the steamer around an empty hauler that trailed black smoke, half-wondering why the owner didn’t adjust the burners. “He had a gun, and he was told to kill us both. I’d think there are more reasons to kill me … but these days, I just don’t know.”

  “A year ago, that you would not have said.”

  “Said what?”

  “You say … you have opened your heart more, and I love you for that.”

  “So have you, and I have loved you longer than I ever let you know.” I laughed ruefully. “Matters would have been a lot easier if I had told you.”

  “Non, je crois que non … I would have heard the words. The meaning, it would have escaped.” Llysette’s hand caressed the back of my neck for a time, and I just drove and enjoyed the sensation, trying to forget about assassins, presidential receptions, and the ghost-related technology that was supposed to have been outlawed—and was still being employed.

  “We won’t know,” I said later … after leaving two more haulers in the Stanley’s wake.

  “What will we not know?”

  “How things would have turned out.”

  She laughed, and so did I. We talked the rest of the trip, enjoying just being together—until we drove up Deacon’s Lane and into our drive.

  Constable Gerhardt was waiting, standing by a Watch steamer, a glum look on his face.

  “I’m sorry, Herr Doktor.” His eyes went to the house, and he fingered one side of the sweeping mustache.

  “Sorry?” I had to shake my head.

  Llysette just frowned, her eyes going from Gerhardt to the house and back again.