Ghosts of Columbia

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  People like Ralston didn’t have to worry about security, mostly because no one knew why they would possibly need it. After all, why would a president’s special assistant for fiscal review need security protection? And Ralston certainly wouldn’t want to advertise that what he was doing was so vital to the presidency that he needed such protection.

  The small yard was landscaped carefully, including an ornate boxwood hedge that paralleled the front walk and a dwarf apple tree only fifteen feet from the low front stoop.

  I walked past on the other side of the street and went up far enough to see the edge of Dumbarton Oaks before I turned around. It’s a private park now, with an art gallery, and the proceeds go to The University—Mister Jefferson’s University.

  My feet were beginning to hurt, probably because walking on brick and stone sidewalks is harder than running country lanes. I sat down on a trolley bench—serving the upper Georgetown branch that doesn’t connect directly with downtown but swings across to New Bruges Avenue and descends to Dupont Circle where you have to transfer. Was what I planned right? Probably not, but what vanBecton and Ralston planned wasn’t either, and while two wrongs don’t make a right, they might equal survival.

  I snorted, feeling cold again, and stood. I began to walk downhill once more with the determined stride of the serious walker, taking in everything I could as I marched by his house. I nodded to the well-dressed couple entering a Rolls-Royce sedan, clearly headed for church, probably the National Cathedral. They actually nodded back, and the white-haired lady offered me a smile.

  That wasn’t the end of it. I scouted the alleys a bit, just to make sure, before I walked back to the trolley and headed back toward home away from home—the fabulous Albert Pick House.

  After I left the trolley on Pennsylvania and Fifteenth, I got a bratwurst from a street cart outside the Presidential Palace, and ate it as I walked down nearly deserted Pennsylvania Avenue. The bratwurst would lead to more indigestion, probably, but I didn’t want to collapse the way I had Saturday.

  I paused at vanBuren Place, north of the Presidential Palace, when I saw a flicker of white in the shadows. A man in a formal coat ran through the east gate, literally through the wooden bars—it was a good thing they weren’t iron—and stopped on the grass. He turned and lifted his hands, as if to surrender, before exploding into fragments of white.

  I frowned. The scene recalled something, but what, I couldn’t remember. A man surrendering and being gunned down. Now his ghost seemed doomed to relive it, time after time. But who had it been? I shook my head and turned toward the hotel. I had a few more pressing problems than recalling modern or ancient history.

  The doorman at the Albert Pick definitely sniffed as I went through, but who was he kidding?

  I had the elevator to myself. Once back in my room, I put on the coveralls and the beard. Then I had to wait for the maids to work their way around the corner before I took the service stairs down to the car park. Since there wasn’t any attendant on duty on Sundays, I didn’t have to worry about how I looked taking the Stanley out—just so long as I didn’t look like me.

  This time I drove up New Bruges and took California, winding around and crossing the area several times. I wanted to be more familiar with the street patterns before Monday night. I didn’t go near vanBecton’s place, but straight to the false Dutch colonial that was the power substation. Out came the toolbox with a few items, like plastique from the equipment bag, carefully eased inside. They say you can do anything with plastique except play with sparks, but I still treat things that can blow you apart with respect. It can’t hurt.

  The locks, both of them, were straightforward, and I was inside in not too much longer than a key would have taken.

  Determining the best way to blow a substation isn’t as easy as it sounds, since the walls are thick and I’d have to run an antenna that couldn’t be seen to where it could pick up the LF signal from the street. Most probably no one would be by to check the station—detailed inspections don’t occur every day—but I couldn’t take that chance.

  In the end I opted for what you might call hidden overkill, with far more plastique than I needed, because I had to hide it. Then I relocked the door and walked briskly to the Stanley and drove away.

  Down on Newfoundland, not too far out, I found a chicken place, Harlan’s, which featured a sign caricaturing a southern colonel and food caricaturing fried chicken. I sat at a small plastic-topped table, balancing on a hard stool, and munched through the chicken. What I got was filling, although I wondered how I’d feel later.

  I should have taken my time, because I needed to wait until it was dark for the next step, and because I began to feel like combining bratwurst and chicken hadn’t been the smartest of gastronomical moves. Instead, I drove out to the zoo, used the public facilities, and looked at penguins. Most people like them, but I feel sorry for them, trapped in their formal wear with nowhere to go and no understanding of what life is all about once they’ve been removed from their habitat—like a lot of people in the Federal District.

  Then I took the Stanley out toward where we had lived, but the firs were taller, and the Gejdensons had added a room and put up a big stone wall around the backyard. I drove by only once, and I didn’t slow down. Instead, I turned on the radio to the all-news station.

  “… Mayor Jefferson has requested an increase in federal payments earmarked for crime prevention. The mayor claimed the increases were necessary to combat the growing use of weapons in street crime and in Federal District schools. Speaker Hartpence’s office has indicated the Speaker will give the mayor’s request full consideration in the next budget.”

  I shook my head.

  “… at the half, the Redskins are down to Baltimore by two goals. The amazing John Elway scored twice, once from barely past midfield. George stopped more than a dozen shots, but couldn’t deny Elway …”

  Who knew, maybe Elway would replace the legend of Chiri. As the twilight deepened, I turned around and headed toward the Arlington Bridge back into Columbia City.

  “Ambassador Schikelgruber will meet with Foreign Minister Gore tomorrow to discuss the issue of placing the second fleet in Portsmouth, England, a step regarded as, quote, ‘uniquely hostile,’ by the Emperor Ferdinand …”

  I eased the steamer up California Street and toward vanBecton’s house. What I needed to do was simple: just set the plastique in the joint of a tree limb so that it would drop the limb across the power line to the vanBectons’. What I needed was a brace and bit, plastique, a detonator, and no spectators.

  The first three were in the trunk. The obstacle to the fourth was a couple parked in an old blue steamer with a huge artificial grille—probably a mideighties DeSoto. Since they were parked practically next to the tree I was targeting, all I could do was drive two blocks away and park … and park.

  After a while I drove up and down Newfoundland for a time, listening to the all-news radio.

  “Elway scored three goals and made the key passes leading to two more as the Redskins lost their fourth straight … national korfball team faces the Austro-Hungarian team Monday night in New Amsterdam … weather tomorrow, clear and unseasonably cold.”

  I drove back past the end of the street, but the damned blue DeSoto still sat there. I took another spin out New Bruges Avenue, this time checking out Summer Valley and the new storefronts out that way, still half listening to the radio as I drove.

  “To find the additional funds, Mayor Jefferson proposed a reduction in the snow removal budget …”

  Why not, I reflected. No one in Columbia City could drive on snow anyway.

  Then I turned over the back bridge to Georgetown and drove around Ralston’s area. I decided to see how I did in the dark. I did fine, and by the time I got back to vanBecton’s street, the damned DeSoto was finally gone, and half the upstairs lights in the nearby houses were already off.

  After all the driving, setting the plastique was almost anticlimactic. All I did was
climb the tree, use the brace and bit, fill the hole and set the detonator, and pat it smooth—and hope that no child found it before the next night.

  I was exhausted by the time I climbed the hotel’s service stairs and sneaked back into my room. I was also so sweaty that I took a shower. Of course, there were no messages. There seldom were, even at home.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Before I left my hotel room Monday morning, I put together the two press packets. The first contained copies of the two letters from “Branstonpackets. to Minister Holmbek and copies of the news stories with my name in them. They were thin—and that was the purpose. It had to appear to the reporters that I was on to something but just couldn’t carry it off myself.

  The second was the follow-on package from the “Spirit Preservation League,” the one I needed to personally send later in the day, after I’d hand-delivered the first classy set of announcements.

  After another breakfast of two too many sweet rolls and more bitter tea from Bread and Chocolate, I returned to my room, pasted a goatee in place, and put on a better, tailored suit, covered with my less reputable trench coat when I left the hotel. Two blocks down the street, I took off the coat and folded it over my arm, hailing a cab.

  “Where to, sir?”

  “Fifteenth Street entrance of the Post-Dispatch.”

  It took less than an hour for the four quick drops—at the Post-Dispatch, the Evening Star, the Monitor, and the RPI wire service.

  Only the Monitor reception desk clerk looked at me and asked, “What is it?”

  “Purely social, my dear,” I answered in my driest and haughtiest accent.

  I gave the driver a ten for the entire trip—a five-dollar fare—regretted publicly my lack of dispatch in not dealing with the whole sordid matter earlier, and in general behaved like an overconcerned upper-class ninny.

  That done, I put the trench coat back on and walked the two blocks back to the hotel, passing vanBuren Place. The ghost was nowhere to be seen, but two gray-haired men played checkers on one of the stone benches. A young woman, probably a ministry clerk, sat silently sobbing on a corner bench under a juniper. I wanted to console her, but how could I tell a complete stranger things would be all right, especially when I was working to ensure they wouldn’t be for some people, just to save my own skin?

  I took a deep breath and walked on, reclaiming the Stanley from the hotel lot. I drove out toward Maryland, turning onto Georgia Avenue until I reached the big Woodward and Vandervaal, where I pulled into the public lot. The sky was clouding up, and raindrops sprinkled the windscreen. There was a public wireset in a kiosk behind the hedges, open to the car park but not to Georgia Avenue.

  I swallowed and dialed vanBecton’s office.

  “Minister vanBecton’s office.”

  “This is Doktor Eschbach. Is he in?”

  “Ah, well, Doktor …”

  “Yes or no? If you have time to trace this, so do the people he doesn’t want to trace it.”

  “Just a moment, sir.”

  The transfer was smooth.

  “Where are you, Johan?”

  “On my way down to see you, provided I can get there without getting torn up in the process.”

  “You expect me to believe that?”

  “Why not? You know very well who else wants me in out of the cold, so that I can be put coldly away.”

  “And we’re supposed to save you from that folly? Dream on.”

  “Absolutely. And I have some goodies for you to persuade you to let me do just that. I’ll wire you again, and you can let me know.”

  I hung up, hoping the call would persuade vanBecton to wait just a bit. It also confirmed he was in town. I got back into the Stanley, paid for my brief stint in the car park, and headed back downtown through a misting drizzle. The traffic was heavier than I had recalled, with more horns honking, and even swearing and gestures from neighboring drivers, although not at me. At least, I didn’t think so.

  A frizzy-blond-haired girl in brown leathers—the country look, I gathered—drove a steam-truck over the median to pass a stalled green Reo. An oncoming hauler sideswiped a boxy old black Williams to avoid her, and she sailed down Georgia with an obscene gesture at the hauler. The rest of us crept by the mess, and I wiped my forehead. Sometimes traffic was worse than the trench-coat-and-wide-brimmed-hat business.

  I put the Stanley back in the Pick House’s car park and then walked down to the Hay-Adams and found a public wireline booth off the lobby. Like the Albert Pick House, the Hay-Adams had seen better days. Unlike the Pick House, the Adams still retained a touch of class, with the carved woodwork, the polished floors, and the hushed reverence and attentiveness of the staff.

  The doorman had even bowed slightly to me, without a trace of condescension to my wrinkled trench coat. Of course, I wasn’t wearing a cheap wool suit, either. Even the wireline booth had a wall seat with an upholstered velour cushion—deep green.

  With my case in my lap, I put in the dime and dialed one number, but it just rang. So I tried a second. It rattled with a busy sound. The third got me an answer.

  “Railley here.”

  “Matt, this is the Colonel Nord doktor. Don’t mention my name out loud. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you interested in proof that the Speaker is playing both sides against the middle on the psychic research issue? And that the Defense Ministry is up to its eyeballs in this?”

  “Shit, yes.”

  “Fine. You’ll get it. In the meantime, ask yourself this question. Why is it that there have been very few of these Babbage bombings and fires until the Speaker formed his new government? Why does he want to use this issue against President Armstrong? What does he gain?”

  “Hold it! What do you know about the Order of Jeremiah?”

  “The what?” I lied.

  “Order of Jeremiah. I got some trash from them claiming that the ‘corrupt federal government’ is attacking the spirits of their ancestors.”

  “What else is new?” I asked. “Every organized religion around has protested the government’s psychic research efforts. They haven’t gotten very far, though. The research seems to be going on.” I paused, then added, “I’ve got to go. Watch for a package.”

  I hung up.

  Then I called two more numbers, including Murtaugh at the Evening Star, with essentially the same message. Murtaugh didn’t ask me about the Order of Jeremiah, and he’d probably dismissed it without reading it. Either that or he was playing it close to the waistcoat.

  Neither asked me about the Spirit Preservation League, but given the volume of Monday offerings they received, I doubted that either had seen the envelopes, classy as they were. I would have liked to space things more, but time was something I just didn’t have.

  My briefcase felt heavier and heavier as I walked back to the hotel in the light rain that the radio hadn’t forecast.

  The entire situation was insane. To get out of the mess I was in, I was essentially going to have to give both the Speaker and the President what they wanted—except without my hide flayed over the package for wrapping paper. I didn’t like either Speaker Hartpence or President Armstrong, but that wasn’t the question. The question was who could do more damage, and the answer to that was clear enough.

  Ahead in the shadows of the alley off L, people dodged toward the street, apparently leaving an open space. As I approached, I saw why. The ghost of a child, probably not more than five, screamed for his mother, his hands stretched up toward the iron fire ladder above. My guts twisted, and my eyes burned. I watched tears stream down the face of a heavyset, well-dressed black woman. She just stood and looked, and I wondered if the child had been hers and what had happened.

  Finally I walked on, thinking about the child ghost. He was certainly a disruption, probably unwanted by everyone except his mother. Probably all the major powers had some way of getting rid of unwanted ghosts, yet no one was implementing the technology on a wide sc
ale. Why not?

  First there was the religious angle. Ferdinand didn’t want to offend the Roman Catholic Church or the Lutherans, or take on the Apostolic Eastern Catholic Church. Speaker Hartpence certainly didn’t want to take on everyone from the Mormons to the Roman Catholics, and Emperor Akihito wouldn’t want to disrupt the ancestor worship that was still prevalent; nor would the warlords and the emperor of Chung Kuo.

  Second was the practical angle. Ghosts kept wars smaller and less expensive. The ghost angle probably was one of the things that had restricted the deployment of nuclear weapons.

  Third was the fact that the present situation allowed for hidden and selective use of ghosting-related technologies, and a more obvious use of those technologies would not have been exactly well received, particularly in more open societies like Columbia or Great Britain.

  In short, nobody wanted the genie out of the box, and that meant nobody was quite sure what was in anyone else’s box.

  Then there was the personal angle. Ghosts were perhaps the last contact with loved ones. Did any government really want to be perceived as severing that contact? What would the press say if the government wanted to take that child’s ghost from his mother?

  I stopped by the car park and locked my case in the trunk, after first removing the press packages and the goatee. The doorman at the Albert Pick didn’t quite sniff at me and my buttoned-up trench coat as I carried my damp self back into the hotel and to my room. First I turned on the video to the all-news station. The talking heads discussed everything from the upcoming negotiations over Japanese nuclear submersible technology to the federal watch subsidy for Columbia City. There wasn’t a word about ghosts or me. Although that wasn’t conclusive, it helped settle my stomach, until I thought about what else I had to do. While I listened, I changed into the blue coveralls that could be a uniform for anything and fixed a short beard in place. As two impeccably groomed men exchanged views on the continuing landing-rights controversy between turbojets and dirigibles in every major air park in the country, I clicked off the set and listened at the hallway door.