Ghost Talkers

by Mary Robinette Kowal

  “No.” Ben shook his head. “Absolutely not.”

  “He is blond and an officer and stationed here.”

  “He also smells like a cologne factory. I would have recognised him by that.”

  “But … but you couldn’t breathe. Would you have been able to smell his cologne?”

  Ben hesitated and then shook his head again. “Well … he’s had ample opportunity before. Why now?”

  “Because it would be easy to disguise as an accident of war.”

  He froze in thought, his edges just flickering with arrested motion. Then he shook his head again. “If I had been shot in battle, perhaps. Although … as much as I don’t trust him with money or anyone I care about, I don’t think he would actually stoop to those depths.” He held up a finger to stop Ginger. “And—I was strangled. So whoever did it knew the camp was going to explode; otherwise my death would have been too obviously a murder. It’s best to proceed with the idea that it’s related to my investigation into the leak.”

  All of which made sense, but none of which, in Ginger’s mind, precluded Reginald from being the culprit. “So what do we do next? Go to meet your contact in the trenches?”

  “What?” Ben radiated confusion.

  “Earlier today.” She grimaced. His memory was slipping more. “When you were trying to remember what you’d spoken to Schmitt about … you mentioned a contact in the trenches. Something about the gas.”

  “I did?”

  “Yes, sir.” Merrow shifted next to Ginger. “I mean, I—I didn’t hear you say that today, but that was the plan we had before … before the explosion.”

  Ben stared at Merrow with something like horror. “That was … I did? What else did I say?”

  “Um … we’d planned to—to go back to Le Havre. You wanted to talk to Miss Stuyvesant about something. I—I don’t know what. But you’d had a letter. From her, I mean. And then we were going straight back to the trenches.”

  “The captain who was murdered.” Ben sagged with relief. “Right. Right. I remember, I wanted to talk to Ginger about Norris. And if I wanted to do so before going to meet my contact … that means that I thought they were related. And—damn.”

  “Why is that bad?”

  “Because I don’t remember where in the trenches.”

  Merrow brightened. “I know that, sir. Because we’ve been there before.”

  “The Baker Street trench? The 11th Lancashire Fusiliers. Right.” Again, a wave of relief rolled off of Ben. “Well. Thank God I remember some things.”

  “Oh, lovely.” Mrs. Richardson brightened. “If only Sherlock Holmes were there, we could ask for a bartitsu demonstration.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  24 JULY 1916

  Merrow managed to find nurses’ uniforms for Ginger and Mrs. Richardson. When she’d asked where, he gave a shy grin and ducked his head. “I have a—a friend.”

  Mrs. Richardson had given a delighted chuckle at that, and nudged the young man with a wink. “Say no more.”

  The red cross on their arms gave them freer movement into the trenches than their blue Spirit Corps uniforms would have, and the wimple of a nurse covered Ginger’s distinctive red hair. It could not mask her flinches at the constant sound of the guns.

  Or the ghosts. She had not thought about the effect of going among so many old ghosts. The British troops had been conditioned to report in and then go to their rest. But these trenches had been held by the Germans, then the French, and then the Germans—trading back and forth with the price of soldiers’ lives. Thousands of memories crowded in with every thundering concussion, each one saying that this was the last sound he had heard before dying. Ginger’s chest was tight, and she could take only the shallowest breaths. The brimstone-scented air burned with reminders of death.

  She was not dead. These were not her memories. She kept her gaze fixed on Merrow’s stooped shoulders as they walked down the narrow earthen trenches. Mrs. Richardson followed behind her, from time to time patting her on the back.

  Ben stayed at her side, slipping through the ghosts as if this had always been his natural environment. “It is all right, darling. These are deep trenches. You aren’t going over the top. It’s all right.”

  With her head down, she doubted any of the soldiers they passed could see her lips. Certainly they could not hear her over the din. “I am fine.”

  “Your aura—”

  “Damn my aura.” Ginger knotted her hands into fists to stop their trembling. “I cannot help my feelings, but I can bloody well control the way I act about them.”

  Ben pulled back a little. “I am so sorry I brought you here.”

  “It was my choice.”

  Merrow had stopped and was speaking with a lieutenant who seemed too bookish to be in a war. Merrow showed him one of the documents from Ben’s drawer and gestured back to Ginger and Mrs. Richardson. The lieutenant stroked his mustache and then beckoned them forward.

  “Lt. Tolkien’ll get us set up.”

  The lieutenant touched his helmet and nodded to Ginger. “Thank you so much for visiting us, sisters. We’ve a couple of chaps as could use looking after. I told Private Merrow to put you in the dugout and I’ll send them round to see you once you’re settled.”

  “Thank you.” Ginger smiled demurely. “We must all do our part.”

  Mrs. Richardson patted her bag. “And we have good clean socks too, which should help with trench foot.”

  It was uncharitable, but Ginger rather hoped they would be gone before then. She had trained as a nurse in the early days of the war, before they put the Spirit Corps together, and knew how to treat various ailments of the feet. It was not the thought of dealing with trench foot which made her wish to be gone, but rather the constant boom and hum of shells flying overhead.

  Most of the soldiers sat in their bunkers, or leaned against the sides of the trenches looking as though no sound was occurring. How did they manage it? She knew, intimately, the crushing fear that most of these men carried inside them, and yet watching them, she would not have been able to tell that they were afraid without their auras. All of them had an air of desperate confidence.

  The small dugout that Tolkien directed them to had been carved into the clay walls of the trench. It was not tall enough to stand in, even for Merrow, and had only rough planks laid for a floor. Steel water tins served as stools. Little clots of dirt shivered free from the ceiling in time with the impacts.

  Merrow wiped off one of the tins with his handkerchief and turned to the other. “Just give—give me a minute.”

  “Thank you.” Ginger looked back out into the trench. “Where was he to meet the spy?”

  “There’s a listening trench off the Baker Street trench. It’s almost all the way to the German lines. Tolkien’s in charge of signals, and he says it’s clear.”

  Ginger nodded and brushed the sweat off her palms onto her skirt. “How much time do we have before the rendezvous is scheduled?”

  Merrow checked his watch. “Another hour and a half before the window for contact opens, but it’ll take a while to worm down the listening trench.”

  “Well, we should probably go before I lose my nerve.”

  “It’s only big enough for one.” Merrow stopped. “I should be the one to go, ma’am.”

  “You can’t hear Ben.” Ginger straightened her cuffs. “It would be different if you could.”

  “Maybe he could—could he possess me?”

  Ben harrumphed. “I’m not a demon.”

  “No. If you were a sensitive and supported by a full circle, you could maybe channel him, but as it is…” Ginger smoothed her skirt, which was covered with dirt at the hem. “I am here because it needs to be me, and I can go down the listening trench as well.”

  “I don’t think—” Ben started, and stopped abruptly as Ginger turned on him.

  “If you are going to say that you don’t think I understand what a listening trench is, then I will be forced to remind you of how many
men have reported in from them. I know exactly what it is and what I am volunteering to do.” But that did not mean she relished the idea at all. Still. It needed to be done. “Mrs. Richardson, will you be all right waiting here?”

  “Oh, you know I can occupy myself anywhere.” The older woman held up her bag and pulled her knitting out of it. The ratty, badly knitted scarf that had been Herr Schmitt’s tumbled out of her bag. She picked it up and frowned at the offending item. Then she smiled up brightly at Ginger. “Besides, I have these poor soldiers to attend to. Go along, you two. I shall look forward to your report.”

  Biting his lip, Merrow stepped out of the dugout and gave Ginger a sturdy nod. “Let me at least show you the way to the listening trench.”

  “Thank you.”

  They went along through the trench, with Ben spinning in circles around her. “I don’t like this. I don’t—I don’t…”

  “Weren’t you the one telling me it would be all right?”

  “Yes.” He pulled in some of the dark sheets of fear that flapped behind him, wadding them up. But each one shredded in his hands and frayed into a dense mist around him. “Yes. But that was before we decided that you were going into a listening trench. I don’t like it—”

  “Here we are, ma’am.” Merrow stood next to a narrow channel carved into the earth at right angles to the rest of the trenches. “It’ll get shallow really fast. You have to crawl on your belly, and—whatever happens, do not lift your head above the walls.”

  “I won’t.” Ginger shook out her skirt. She should have worn men’s clothing—even if it wouldn’t have fooled anyone, it would have been more practical for this. “Will you wait with Mrs. Richardson? And look after her?”

  “Of course, ma’am.” Merrow swallowed, a ball of tight anxiety. “Be careful. Or the captain will—will haunt me for the rest of my days, I should imagine.”

  Ben laughed and clutched his head. “He has that right, but don’t say so.”

  “He says he won’t blame anything but my own pigheadedness.” She offered Merrow her hand. “Thank you.”

  He stared at it for a moment, then drew himself up and offered her a salute. “I see why he loves you, ma’am.”

  Loves. Present tense. Ginger turned her head away so the tears that pricked her eyes would not trouble Merrow. Nodding to herself, Ginger started down the trench. The sides brushed against her skirt, and she had to turn sideways to keep from rubbing her shoulders. A step up made it so shallow that she had to crawl with her skirt hiked up to her knees.

  Gradually it became more shallow, until she had to creep along on just her elbows and toes. The dirt was shattered and torn by successive blasts. The smell of ozone and burned flesh took up residence in her nostrils. Ginger’s shoulders ached from the unaccustomed posture.

  She stopped to catch her breath and rest, with her forehead pressed against the earth. Ben lay next to her, half in the dirt wall at her side. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes. Of course.” Ginger wiped her face on the back of her sleeve and left a streak of dirt across the fabric. “Conserving my resources is not a sign of weakness, just prudence.”

  She raised herself onto her elbows again and squirmed forward. The uneven, shallow trench had been dug in a hurry. She and the other sappers had needed to speed out under the cover of darkness to make this trench, praying the Germans wouldn’t see her or Basil as they was digging. Hard it was, digging in the dark and trying to be silent and every second sure that you were about to be shot.

  “Ginger!”

  She blinked and shook her head. “I’m fine.” That had been someone else. Not her. She set her teeth and crawled on.

  Ben floated beside her, trailing a long cloak of worry behind him. “Did I ever tell you about the time I scored a century and took a five-for in the same match? I’d have carried my bat, except for this very athletic chap at silly mid off.”

  “Are you attempting to calm me with cricket stories?”

  “I thought something innocuous might take your mind off things.”

  “Innocuous or dull? I am not yet that desperate.”

  “I thought you admired me in my whites!”

  “Appreciating fine tailoring is not at all the same as having an interest in the game.” Ginger crawled grimly forward. “It was part of my full disclosure when you proposed.”

  “Along with the fact that you favour Dvořák over ragtime, which I continue to be baffled by.”

  “That is because you had a misguided impression of American girls based on the newspapers. You, on the other hand, are predictably British, and—oh! God.”

  Ginger yanked her hand back from the corpse that lay partially in the trench ahead of her.

  “Ginger! Stay down. Do not—”

  “I am not going to stand up screaming like an idiot.” Ginger wiped her hand on the dirt. “Honestly. I deal with dead people every day.”

  “But not … not their bodies.”

  “No.” Fortunately, she was not a squeamish person. The body in front of her had belonged to a German who had been dead for several days. The biggest problem was that she was going to have to move it in order to continue forward. “Thank heavens his ghost did not stick around. That I couldn’t have borne.”

  “And this is part of why I love you so very much.”

  Ginger wriggled forward and rolled onto her back for better leverage. “You do pick the oddest time for declarations. Though … I suppose this isn’t any more peculiar than your proposal. Not really.”

  “You look charming when covered in dirt.”

  “Oh! Is that the theme?” She took hold of the corpse by the lapels of its uniform and tried to work it backward, to little effect. “I had rather hoped it was when I was rescuing someone.”

  “I was not in need of rescue.”

  “Excuse me?” She paused, the corpse’s head leering down at her. “Your motor was stuck in the mud, and you weren’t exactly making any strides pushing it out on your own. We would have been there all night if I hadn’t gotten out to help.”

  “Speaking of pushing … do you want me to…?” He slid closer to the corpse and ran a hand along its back. The fabric rippled in a cool breeze.

  “Don’t you dare poltergeist.” Watching him wear himself to shreds again … it was not something Ginger could manage. She wet her lips, set her shoulders, and gave a jerk to the side.

  The corpse slid over, not completely out of the trench, but lying more to the side. Another push and she should—

  A machine-gun burst slammed into the corpse. It jerked and flopped as if having a fit. Bits of rotting flesh spattered the trench around her. Ginger stiffened and lay still, staring at the smoke-filled sky. Her heart raced in her chest, but she set her jaw and tried to be calm. As long as she did not lift her head, she would be safe in the trench.

  Ben crouched over her, as if the red plate armour of his alarm could protect her.

  When the machine gun had stopped, Ginger whispered, “Can you see the gunner?”

  “Indeed.” He tilted his head. “He’s still watching the corpse.”

  Ginger craned her neck to look down the trench toward the listening post. The machine-gun fire had actually shifted the corpse enough that she thought … “I can get past it.”

  She had to press against the arm and shoulder of the dead man to wriggle past, and the fluid-drenched soil stank with the contents of his innards. She held her breath as she pushed past him, waiting for another machine-gun burst.

  Once past, she rolled onto her belly again and resumed the relentless crawl forward.

  After what seemed like another quarter hour, Ben soared up overhead, stretching his arms out and spinning, before zooming down next to her again. “Darling, from here on, be very quiet. We’re only a few metres from the German line.”

  Ginger nodded and continued her slow creep forward until the trench ended in a slightly wider, deeper depression. It was just deep enough to sit in, if she kept her head low. She leaned aga
inst the side and rubbed her throbbing shoulders.

  Ben hesitated and put one hand on her shoulder; the cool of his presence seeped through the cloth and into her skin. “Does that … does that help?”

  She nodded. It was like having a living ice pack—or not. Not living. Ginger smiled and gave him a thumbs-up.

  “You can whisper.” He frowned. “I think … I don’t think I’m exactly hearing your voice. I mean—I know I can’t hear your thoughts, but no matter how much other noise is around, I don’t seem to have any trouble hearing you.”

  She tried the experiment of just mouthing the words. “Well, that’s one improvement in your new state, then.”

  “Hey!” He laughed, ruffling her hair with a breeze. “I always heard you. I just may not have always listened to you.”

  “Ah. Well, then … that hasn’t changed after all.” How was she supposed to keep on without him? “So. What am I to do now? I mean—here. How do we make contact with your person?”

  “We wait. The window for contact is two hours, so we just have to wait until he comes in. If you sit against that wall, you should be able to hear tapping. When you do…” Ben trailed off, soul fuzzing around the edges with uncertainty. “Just let me know.”

  “Will you need me to write it down?”

  “Yes—yes, I will.” He ran his hands through his hair. “Thank you.”

  She pulled out a pad of paper and a pencil she had tucked into her pocket, and shifted to sit with her back against the wall closest to the Germans. It gave her a view down the long trench she had just crawled through. She had barely been below the surface for most of the way here. The sappers who did this didn’t do their job proper. Didn’t she know it was hard. Her hands, bleeding from all the blisters as was on them from the shovel. And all the while, digging half crouched, as if that would make a difference if the Huns decided to start shooting. And then the steady tapping of German sappers, crawling beneath—

  No. The tapping was here and now. Ginger bit the inside of her lip and tried to steady her breathing again. Her hands weren’t blistered. She hadn’t dug anything. Ben crouched in front of her, cloaked in worry again.