Authors: L.E. Modesitt Jr.

Tags: #Science Fiction, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Alternate History, #United States, #Literature & Fiction

Ghosts of Columbia (41 page)

BOOK: Ghosts of Columbia

8.56Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

ads

The wind had picked up when I left the office to cross the grounds to Smith, enough that the two university zombies toiling there—Gertrude and Hector—were having trouble raking the fallen and soggy leaves. I smiled at Gertrude, cheerfully struggling with her rake, perhaps because I still recalled her reaction to
Heinrich Verruckt
the spring before. Zombies were those unfortunate beings who had lost that part of their soul that would have been a ghost, or that part of their soul had left them prematurely to become a ghost. Zombies weren’t supposed to feel strong emotions, but Gertrude had sobbed, zombie or no zombie.

Hector inclined his head, and I offered him a smile. Hector, one of the few somber zombies, nodded, but it wasn’t quite a smile.

Wednesday was usually a long day. So were Mondays and Fridays, since I taught the same schedule on all three days, but Wednesday felt longer, particularly with my eleven o’clock Environmental Economics 2A class. Smythe 203 was always hot, even in midwinter, and Mondriaan didn’t help. He had the room before me, and he made sure it was like an oven. Usually I didn’t even have to open the windows because the students had done it first. That was about all they were good for on some days.

The blank looks on the faces of those in the front row indicated what kind of day it was going to be.

I forced a smile. “Mister Rastaal, what are the principal diseconomies of a coal-fired power plant, and how can a market economy ensure that they become real costs of production?”

“Ah, Doktor Eschbach … I was on the korfball trip, and somehow, I didn’t bring the text…”

I didn’t even sigh. “Miss Raalte?”

“Doktor… the cost of coal mining?”

“Mister Nijkerk?”

“The … ah … um … cost of transporting the coal to the power plant?”

“Miss Rijssen?”

Elena Rijssen just looked at the weathered desktop in front of her. I had to call on Martaan deVaal—one of the few who read the material faithfully.

All this came after an entire class dealing with external diseconomies. Of course, the class had been two weeks earlier, but I tended to forget that retention of material for more than one period was not a strength of the students at Vanderbraak State University. Or any university, I suspected. Why were there so few who really sought an education?

The combination of difference engines and the videolink had given them all the mistaken idea that everything could be looked up and nothing needed to be retained.

After deVaal finished I did sigh. Loudly. “We discussed external diseconomies two weeks ago.” I walked to the chalkboard and wrote the question out. Actually, I printed it, because my handwriting is abysmal. “A two-page essay answering this question is due at the next class. It will be counted the same as a quiz.”

A low muttering groan suffused the classroom, and several students glared at Mister Rastaal and Miss Raalte. One glared at deVaal, as if having the temerity to read the material were a mortal sin. I felt sorry for deVaal, but not enough to let the rest of the class go.

“Now … Mister Zwolle … would you please define the total pollutant load from a coal-fired power plant?”

Most of them didn’t know all of that answer, either, except for sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide.

It was a very long class.

Afterward, I managed to scurry across the windswept grounds of the university, glad to see that Gertrude and Hector had abandoned their raking, and down toward the square. The post centre clock had struck twelve just as I reached the door.

“Your table is ready, Doktor Eschbach.” Victor motioned me ahead of several others and toward the table Llysette preferred—close to the woodstove. I was looking at the wine list when my lady arrived, clutching not only a purse but also a large, brown, bulky envelope.

“Good afternoon, Doktor duBoise.” I couldn’t help grinning at the ritual as I stood.

“Afternoon, I must concede, Herr Doktor Eschbach. And it is good…”

“If it is good … some wine to celebrate?”

At the sound of the word “wine,” Victor appeared.

“The chocolate, today, I think. And the soup with the croissants.” She smiled.

“Chocolate, too,” I decided. “The special, chicken and artichoke pasta.”

Victor shrugged at our rejection of the wine but bowed and took the menus.

“What is your news? The envelope?”

“This…It arrived just before noon. I cannot believe it.”

“Just now? This noon?”

She smiled and nodded again. “An invitation, a contract … to sing in the great concert hall of Deseret. Six weeks from now … because Dame Brightman has been hospitalized. That is what I have been asked. Did you know that it is one of the largest … perhaps like the Arena di Verona…”

I’d never heard of the Arena di Verona, and my face showed it.

“Perhaps, it is not that large … but it is certainly as large as Covent Garden.” Her eyes glazed over for a moment, and I wondered which singer within that
body—Carolynne the ghost soprano or Llysette the former songbird of fallen France—was reminiscing.

“Deseret?”

“The man who came to see me sing—the one in the ancient coat… I think he signed the letter.”

“Are they paying?” I asked, all too imprudently, but lately all too many organizations in New Bruges had been requesting that Llysette perform either gratis or for nominal fees.

“You, you should look.” She thrust the stack of papers at me.

So I did, while she edged her chair slightly closer to the woodstove and watched. Being married hadn’t made her any less susceptible to the chill of New Bruges, but perhaps more willing to let me know. The cover letter praised her performance in New Bruges and extended the invitation to perform in Great Salt Lake City. It was signed by a Bishop Jacob Jensen, on behalf of the Prophets’ Foundation for the Arts in Deseret.

I’d never cared much for the Saints of Deseret, even as I’d admired their ability to carve an independent nation out in the western wilderness between New France and Columbia. These days … Deseret scarcely qualified as a wilderness, not with its coal and iron, its synthetic fuels technology developed from the northern European refugees, and with its carefully guarded monopoly on naturally colored cottons that needed no dyes.

The political problem was that polygamy, even as restrained as it had become in the last few generations, had not set well with Columbia from the beginning. Nor had Deseret done much to allay my concerns about their not-always-so-environmental actions, but I tried not to let my past as a Subminister for Environmental Protection intrude upon Llysette’s career.

The contract seemed generous, very generous—$ 10,000 for three performances at the Salt Palace Concert Hall and two master classes for the University of Deseret. A $5,000 cheque—Columbian dollars—was included as a retainer, drawn on the Bank of the Federal District of Columbia, plus all transportation, including the offer of a first-class cabin on the
Breckinridge,
of the Columbian Speaker Line.

There was another sheet: “Standard Requirements for Female Performers in Deseret.” I read it and then handed it to Llysette.

“Mais non!
Too much it is…I must have a husband … as a …”

“Chaperon?” I suggested.

“And the gowns … no uncovered arms above the elbow, and the covered shoulders? Do they come out of … a seraglio?” She jammed the requirements sheet back into my hand. “This … I will not do!”

“You certainly don’t have to. I did hear somewhere that the Salt Palace Concert Hall is the largest and most prestigious concert hall in Deseret,” I said quietly. “If not in the western part of North America.”

“My own words you do not have to throw at me.” Llysette thrust out her lower lip in the exaggerated pout that indicated she wasn’t totally serious … not totally.

Victor hovered in the background with the chocolate, and I nodded. The two mugs of heavy and steaming chocolate were followed with Llysette’s soup and my pasta and with the hot, plain, and flaky croissants.

I took a sip of the chocolate. “And you could have a recital gown made to their standards from the retainer cheque—”

“Johan!” sputtered Llysette over her mug.

“You did tell me that once your gowns—”

“You mock me!”

“I am sorry. I didn’t mean that. I was teasing you, but … sometimes you are even more serious than I am.” I offered a long face, and that got a bit of a smile. The pasta wasn’t up to Victor’s normal standards, too heavy by half, but the sauce was good, and I was hungry.

So was Llysette, and we ate silently for a time.

The contract for Llysette bothered me, though. Yes, she had been one of the top divas in France before it fell to the Austro-Hungarians. Yes, there were few singers in Columbia who could match the performance I had heard on Friday. And yes, the rate offered was probably even a shade cheap for a world-class diva. And yes, it would do her ego, her reputation, her status at the university, and her pocketbook good. But no one had been offering Llysette contracts, ostensibly because of her unsettled status. Why now?

Admittedly, she’d finally gotten her citizenship and gotten married, both of which made her more acceptable to Deseret, but how would the Saints have known that? Or had someone alerted them to it? And why?

None of it made sense, and from the time I’d been a junior pilot in the Republic Naval Air Corps I’d known that coincidences just didn’t occur.

“You are thoughtful.”

“I wondered about the contract … why it arrived now.”

Llysette shrugged, then smiled. “Perhaps …”

“Perhaps what?”

“You recall the seminars last summer?”

“The ones where all those singers came in?” I did remember them. We’d barely been married a month when dozens of young singers had arrived for Dean Er Recchus’s MusikFest, and I’d barely seen Llysette for two weeks.

“A young man there was from the University of Deseret. He was a Saint missionary, but a good bass. The arrangement of the Perkins piece ‘Lord of Sand,’ he provided that, and I wrote Doktor Perkins. You remember,
n’est-ce pas?”

I nodded. Perkins had written a note back, sending several other arrangements and professing enthusiasm about her singing his work.

“This Doktor Perkins, he is well known everywhere.”

“Well known enough to get you a contract, or to want to?”

“Non …
but could he not recommend?”

A noted Saint composer—yes, he could recommend, and the Saints were so hidebound they probably had sent someone to double-check. I nodded. Put in that light, it made some sense, especially with a performer hospitalized. But I wondered. Then, after what we’d been through, I wondered about everything.

I wanted to chide myself. After everything we’d been through? Llysette had been through far more—imprisonment and torture under Ferdinand after the fall of France, a struggle to get to Columbia even after the interventions of the Japanese ambassador who had loved opera and Llysette’s performances, and then the unspoken Spazi injunctions against her performing too publicly.

Llysette glanced out through the window toward the post centre clock, then took a last sip of chocolate.

“Late it is. Notes … more notes must I beat.”

“Don’t you have … the good one?”

“Marlena vanHoff … she is a joy …
mais apres …
.” Llysette shook her head.

I motioned to Victor, thrust the banknotes upon him, and we were off—me to prepare for my two o’clock and Llysette for yet another lesson of studio voice.

The wind was stiffer and colder, foreshadowing another storm, probably of ice, rather than snow, the way the winter was beginning.

CHAPTER THREE

L
lysette didn’t run with me before breakfast, and she wasn’t exactly a morning person, even on Saturdays when we slept in—except sleeping in for me was eight o’clock, still a relatively ungodly hour for Llysette.

After the strenuous efforts required during the previous year, I’d vowed I’d never let myself lapse back into the sedentary professor I’d almost become after I’d been involuntarily retired as Subminister for Environmental Protection. Of course, my nervous overeating didn’t help. Still, at times, it hadn’t seemed that long since I’d been a flying officer in the Republic Air Corps, and my assignments in the Sedition Prevention and Security Service had certainly required conditioning. Especially with Llysette beside me, though, it took great willpower to lever myself out of bed, not that I was sleepy.

But I ran—hard—up past Benjamin’s frosted fields and well over the top of the hill through the second-growth forest that was beginning to resemble what had existed when the Dutch had reached the area from New Amsterdam.

I was still sweating long after I got back to the house and kitchen, even somewhat by the time the coffee and chocolate were ready and I called up the stairs, “Your coffee awaits you, young woman!”

“You wake too early, Johan.” After a time, she stumbled down the steps wrapped in a thick natural cotton robe, disarrayed, yet lovely, and slumped into the chair, looking blankly at the coffee.

“I’ve already been—”

“Johan …”

I sipped my chocolate, then started on finishing up, preparing the rest of breakfast—some scones, with small omelets, not exactly Dutch, but tasty, and my cooking has always been eclectic.

“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 idiot 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?”

BOOK: Ghosts of Columbia

8.56Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

Read Book Download Book

ads