I waited for a westbound tanker bearing the logo “Deseret Fuels” and easily several dozen times the size of the Reo. Then I turned behind a gray Browning that left me in the dust of the two-lane road that angled toward the mountains.
To my right, I could see a second flat lake, surrounded by factories, with smoke and steam pouring into the chill early-winter air. The higher reaches of the mountains framed by the front windscreen were mostly white.
I drove for more than a quarter of an hour, intermittently being passed, and drawing closer and closer to the mountains, taller than I realized. A glance in the rearview mirror told me that a glistening red steamer was sweeping up behind. The road on the other side was clear, and the red Browning swept past, then slowed. A purple flag popped from the side window and fluttered there. I just watched for a moment, then finally lowered my window and waved. What else was I supposed to do?
The red Browning accelerated out of sight even before I pulled out into a wide turnout on the right side.
I glanced around. The turnout was empty, except for a painted green metal drum for trash.
After opening the door and setting the radio on the roof, I cranked up the collapsible antenna. The frequencies were already set. I cleared my throat, my heart pounding.
“Embassy, this is Eschbach. Do you read me?”
After a moment of static, an answer squawked through the speaker: “Say again, please.”
“Embassy, this is Eschbach. Do you read me?”
“We read you, Minister. A little weak, but we read you. There’s someone who wants to talk to you.”
I hoped it was Llysette. Lord, I hoped!
“Johan?”
“Llysette?”
“Mais oui, mon cher… .”Her voice was tired, but it sounded like her voice, despite the static.
“How is Carolynne?” No one else would know what I meant, and I hoped that she wasn’t too tired to understand.
“Ah, she and I are well. Did you know that once she sang for the First Prophet?”
I frowned and tried to call up a memory or an image … but only got a hazy sense of limelights. “I don’t recall that.”
“That was before she met the deacon.”
“Are you all right?”
“I am tired. I have some bruises. This was not bad. This was not so bad as the Fall of France.” She laughed gently. “It was not so bad as when you and I came to know Carolynne better.”
“You’re sure.”
“Certain I am.”
I nodded. “You take care, and stay in the Columbian embassy until this is over.”
“Mais oui. I do not like what you do.”
Neither did I. “I’ll be fine,” I lied.
“You must take care. You, we want you back safely.”
“I wanted you back safely.”
“We know. Take care, mon cher.”
“You, too. I’ll do the best I can. Just keep yourself safe.”
I finally flicked off the radio and glanced around the turnout. A battered black hauler rumbled past, its front hood wreathed in steam, then another new Browning, this one blue.
The radio antenna went down, the unit back into the seat beside me, and I eased the Reo out back onto Route Three, still headed east. All I could do was hope … hope that everything went right, knowing that, once again, it probably wouldn’t.
I drove steadily east for another ten minutes, until I needed a side road. Abruptly a cargo hauler pulled out in front of me, a square purple banner flying from the black-painted door mirror frame. I slowed to follow the big steamhauler.
Five minutes later, the hauler turned left, back north, along Beehive Six, and in less than ten minutes we were back on the expressway, headed north.
Perhaps three miles farther north, the hauler slowed and stopped under a bridge. I swallowed and stopped right behind it, then picked up the case, leaving the radio behind but triggering the transmitter with a blank signal. That might help.
I walked toward the hauler, the kind with a double cab and without windows in the back. The rear cab door on the shoulder side was open. I saw no one, and the front window was blackened.
I stepped up into the rear seat, empty, and with a partition between the front seats and the rear.
Nothing happened.
I sighed and closed the door, sitting there in the gray gloom of the enclosed space, unable to see who was driving, where I was headed, and where I was going. With a hiss, the hauler eased out into the traffic I couldn’t see.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
On the narrow bench seat in the back of the hauler I bounced, occasionally steadying myself, as the vehicle turned off the expressway and began to wind through streets, presumably of Great Salt Lake City. The single door had no window. The odor of oil and heated metal seeped up around me, and the space was hot, especially with a wool suit coat and the plastique vest that didn’t really breathe. Even after taking off my overcoat, I felt faintly nauseated without any fresh air.
After a time, the hauler slowed, then stopped, and a rumbling screech followed. Then the hauler inched forward and lurched to a second stop. The screech of ill-lubricated metal punctuated more rumbling. The hiss of escaping steam indicated a shutdown. I waited.
Finally, a figure in a gray jumpsuit, wearing a gauzy sort of black hood over his head that concealed all but his general head shape, opened the door. “Minister Eschbach?”
“That’s me.”
“Follow me, please.”
Without much choice, I followed the fellow. He didn’t think much of me or my abilities—or knew I wouldn’t do much—because he scarcely looked in my direction as we walked through what seemed to be an industrial garage and down a narrow corridor to a door, which he unlocked.
“If you would.”
I stepped into the room—more like a prison cell, I supposed. No windows, a pallet bed, a shower nozzle over a drain surrounded by a curtain, and an exposed toilet. No sink. One towel hung on a wooden bracket on the wall, a bar of soap on the back of the toilet.
He stepped inside after me. “What’s in the case?”
“Material I thought I might need.”
“You might. Would you open it, please, and leave it on the floor?”
I did and stepped back, trying to sniff the air, which smelled like industrial solvents and chlorine combined.
He leafed through the papers. Despite the hood, I had the feeling his eyes were half on me—alert but very amateurish. Then he stood.
“What exactly do you want?” I asked. No sense in assuming too much.
“The ghost of the first Revelator. Your skills should be sufficient to locate and recall up his ghost.”
“Not Prophet Young?”
“He was the antiprophet who turned the Saints from the true path to Zion.”
I didn’t pretend to know that much about Brigham Young, but I had to wonder how the prophet who had built an independent nation out of the wilderness had set the Saints on the wrong path. “I’m not sure I understand… .”
“They’ve hidden it, but it’s there,” answered the tall figure. He shifted his weight and stated, as if he were quoting, “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, no one shall be appointed to receive my commandments and revelations in this church excepting my servant Joseph Smith, Junior.”
I waited, and I wasn’t disappointed.
“And if thou art led at any time by the Comforter to speak or teach, or at all times by the way of the commandment unto the church, thou must do it. But thou shalt not write by way of commandment, but by wisdom; and thou shalt not command him who is at thy head, and the head of the church.”
“I take it that means that there are no other prophets but Joseph Smith?” I tried to ask casually.
“Even an unbeliever understands that, and yet those hypocrites who strut in the Temple do not.”
I couldn’t imagine First Counselor J. Press Cannon strutting anywhere but kept my mouth shut.
“Even the Danites have for
gotten the meaning of their motto.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know the motto.”
“It’s from the Book of Daniel: ‘They shall take the kingdom and possess it forever.’ President Taylor’s weaknesses will turn Deseret back to the Lamanites of the south and the Zoramites of Columbia.”
“And?” I asked gently.
“All that the prophet strove for will be lost. Once again, Sampson shall rise. You wouldn’t know that, Gentile, but Sampson always rises again. Sampson Avard was one of the pillars of the early Saints, until the followers of Satan turned the prophet against him.”
“That’s all very well, but how do you expect me to locate a ghost that vanished more than a century ago?”
“You have that knowledge.” Abruptly he stepped back and closed the door. The lock clicked.
I closed the datacase and set it on the foot of the pallet bed and began to study the room, or converted toolroom. The walls were cinder or cement block, the floor ancient concrete. So was the ceiling. I checked the door—metal, solid core, steel-framed, with the hinges on the outside. Not impossible to get out of in a pinch, assuming there was some steel in the bed frame or that a few things on my person might assist, but the work would be laborious and noisy. A single lightbulb was set in a bracket above the door, but no switch was visible in the room.
The area had been prepared well, and in advance. I went and sniffed around the pallet bed. No scent of Ivoire, and that probably meant they’d held Llysette elsewhere. Good for her, not so good for me.
“You have that knowledge.” The certainty of those words chilled me. They weren’t asking me to create a ghost. They’d been told that I could find a ghost that had once existed, a very specific ghost. That was impossible. The first Revelator’s electromagnetic spirit field had long since dissipated, if it had even survived his assassination. Yet to escape, to have any chance of surviving, I had to do that. And that meant creating an “old” ghost from scratch. Subconsciously I’d figured out something along that line, but I’d thought the Revealed Twelve were political opportunists who’d wanted me to create a ghost for political purposes. Instead, I had theological fanatics who’d been set up by someone else. They still needed a ghost, but … fooling them would be hard, far harder than what I’d anticipated.
With a shrug I sat on the end of the pallet bed. I didn’t touch the scan-transparent blade that remained in my belt or anything else. There was no reason to, yet.
Perhaps a half hour passed, and I finally checked my watch—twenty minutes. I opened the case and began to study the notes I’d taken.
Some time later, the door clicked, and a shorter figure stood there.
“If you would come this way, it’s time to begin your work.”
I didn’t ask if the work was mandatory.
The second door in the corridor was open. He gestured, and I stepped inside. Light poured down from a bank of ceiling glow strips. The walls were generally the same blocks, and there was a large glass mirror inset on one wall. Next to the single door was a booth or shield of sorts, which was topped with two feet of leaded glass. Another figure, also in a gray jumpsuit and hooded, stood there. The side of the shield facing the difference engine shimmered.
The more I saw, the less I liked it. In the middle of the room were an oak table and chair. On the table were several items I recognized.
In fact, I had to swallow. The difference engine on the table was almost an exact clone of my own SII machine, and it was fitted with the gadgetry Bruce and I had developed—that is, the projection/collection antennae, but nothing that resembled the de-ghosting projector.
“I take it you find this familiar?” There was a laugh.
“I have to compliment you on your thoroughness.”
“Take a seat, Minister Eschbach.”
I saw no reason not to, even though he didn’t sit, probably since there was only the single chair, except for the stool for the guard behind the booth shield.
“Let’s make it simple,” I suggested. “What do you want?”
“You know that already. We want you to bring back the ghost of the first prophet, the Revelator of Truth.”
“That might be possible,” I conceded.
“We’ve been led to believe that it is very possible.”
“Do you have any real timetable for all this?”
“We had hoped you could bring back the ghost of the Revelator within a week.”
“I’ll need some help from you.”
“You’re the expert.”
“Not on the prophet. To … recall … his ghost I’ll need some help on what teachings and sayings you feel are the most important.”
“Why?”
“The more information I have, the easier the location will be.” That was as close to the truth as I could get.
“That might be possible.” My escort gestured toward the difference engine. “You can begin anytime. It would be more useful if you didn’t attempt to direct any of the antennae in this direction.” His hand went to the mirror set into the wall facing the difference engine. “That is two-way glass. You’ll be under constant surveillance from at least two points.”
With a cough and then a click of the door, he was gone. The click told me another thing: it was locked from the outside as well, locking one guard in with me.
They’d had some briefing on my background. Not only that, but somehow, I felt they didn’t trust me.
I looked around the gray room. Everything was gray or reflective gray. There was too much money and preparation for simple fanatics, and that bothered me. It bothered me a lot.
Finally, I took out one of Bruce’s pens and some paper. Then I flicked on the difference engine. It called up my own directory. I swallowed again, when I saw the disk case by the keyboard—with the backups for the hidden files for ghost creation.
No … I wasn’t dealing with just a bunch of political schismatics. The combination of religious fanatics and an unknown political manipulator was even worse. I swallowed and looked around at the gray once more. My forehead was very damp, and I felt flushed all over.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Early tuesday morning found me back in front of the equipment that effectively duplicated my own, looking at a stack of my own notes and shifting back and forth between three profile configurations, with another hooded and silent guard watching everything.
The concrete-walled and -ceilinged room still smelled of ancient oil and dusty concrete and of heated synthetics being cured in the new difference engine before me.
One stack of notes blurred into another, and I massaged my stiff neck.
When I’d tried to create the first replica of Carolynne, the whole profile had collapsed. I never did really create her ghost doppelgänger from scratch—if doppelgänger were the term for a copy of a ghost of a singer who’d been killed a century earlier. I’d actually ended up making a duplicate of the real ghost of Carolynne. The ghost of justice and mercy had never been more than a caricature—enough to still give me shivers when he/it surfaced inside my soul, but a caricature. Now I had to create a “real” complete ghost, when I’d never accomplished that before, while pretending that I was only “finding” an existing ghost. And I had to get it done in a way in which I could walk away from the results.
Would three separate profile configurations be enough? I shook my head. Not for what I had in mind. My eyes went to the gray screen and the pointer poised there.
Finally, I called up what I’d been working on and took a deep breath, looking at the smeared mirror surface of the two-way glass across the top of the difference engine from me. All I saw was the reflection of a stubbled professor, once again in over his head.
The guard remained silent.
I started to set up the sketchy profile files for loading, but when I did try the loading, the machine locked.
The guard leaned forward. I reset the difference engine and waited. The same thing happened again. So I took out the empty auxiliary disk and
studied it.
I could tell, as usual, nothing was going quite as planned, either for my captors or for me. They hadn’t bothered to get SII auxiliary disks, or the generic equivalent, and I needed the auxiliaries because the equipment was designed to use both the fixed disk and the auxiliary simultaneously or actually in rapid switch succession. That wouldn’t have been a problem in Columbia, but Deseret used the New French standards, with a different balance and spin rate.
Purists would say that you can vary the auxiliary disk spin rate and it makes no difference. In fact, some claim you can get better performance that way. Maybe … but my system—or the clone set up by the Revealed Twelve—wouldn’t take standard Deseret disks. I was finding that out early on.
I reset the difference engine, cleared the screen, and tried a disk format.
“Not reading auxiliary drive” scripted out on the screen.
For a moment, I sat there looking at the machine. Finally, I turned to the guard behind the shield.
“I need standard Colombian auxiliary disks. These don’t work, and I can’t reformat them, and they’ll only foul up the system.”
“Keep working.”
“I’ll do what I can, but I can’t finish the project without at least one auxiliary disk.” I rubbed my stubbly chin. The shower, such as it was, kept me clean, but my clothes weren’t getting any fresher, and I hadn’t brought even spare underwear—another one of those stupid oversights. I was making entirely too many of those.
The guard mumbled or grunted.
I touched the cover of the difference engine.
“You don’t need to do that,” he snapped.
So … they didn’t want me monkeying with the equipment. That also triggered my suspicious mind.
I played around with Bruce’s calculator and diddled some figures, then put it back in my pocket and wrote out some more code lines to build up the profile that I’d eventually have to transfer to the disks I didn’t have.
Another guard stepped into the room, and the two mumbled for a moment, low enough that I couldn’t hear, before the second disappeared and the lock clicked.
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