Ghost of the White Nights

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “Non . . . but the dean he did not wish to upset.”

  “Now, he'll have to, and she'll be much more upset than if he'd explained the problem last summer, when he learned that enrollment had gone up by twenty more majors.”

  “It was thirty, Johan.”

  “Mademoiselle . . . monsieur . . .” Victor appeared with the baked French onion soup. “The cheese, the Gruyere, is not aged as it should be, but I cannot get the proper cheeses.”

  “Are you having trouble with supplies, Victor?”

  “Only with the special items, Doktor . . . beef I can get, but not good veal. Les champignons . . . those I get from my wife's brother . . . and without my spice garden . . . all would be lost.” He shrugged. “We do what we can.”

  “You do it very well, and we appreciate it.”

  Victor beamed, if only for a moment. “The special . . . you will like it.” Then he vanished.

  I tried the soup. Despite Victor's protestations, it was excellent, the onions neither limp nor too crunchy, and the Gruyere melted just right over the crouton cover that was also perfectly crisp. We ate silently for a time. It had been a long morning, in its own way.

  “Dierk didn't say that you shouldn't go, did he?”

  “That, I did not allow.” Llysette arched her eyebrows. “Il n'est pas fou. He would not wish to cross the dean . . . or you, Johan.”

  “David wasn't exactly pleased when I told him.”

  “Your David, he is a fool. Do you not always have the full classes?”

  “Usually.” I laughed. “I'm not sure why. I probably mark the hardest, and ask the most of the students.”

  “Even the Dutch dunderheads, they can understand who can teach,” Llysette pointed out. Her mouth turned up in an impish smile. “And the young girls, they think there is mystery in a professor who was a spy.”

  “There's not much glamorous about it. You know that.”

  “They do not.” She tilted her head slightly. “You show . . . the danger, Johan. The girls can feel it. A safe danger, you are.”

  “Because I'm married to you?”

  “Exactement. Do not forget that.” She spoiled the effect by smiling. “Herr Doktor Donniger cannot see. The most dense of your girl students see, but he cannot.”

  “David can't see much beyond David and faculty politics.” I looked up to see Victor approaching with a tray.

  “Power there is. Politics are not power.”

  I nodded. She'd put it succinctly. Too often, especially in democratic societies, people mistook the mechanisms of power for power itself. “Did you get in touch with Terese Stewart?”

  “I did. She is most excited.” Llysette smiled. “More than am I. She has done the Vocalise, but not ‘The Lilacs.’ The others, elles ne sont pas si difficile.”

  As Victor set his special champignon dish down before us, I decided to set aside musico-political ruminations and concentrate more on gourmet gustatory explorations, inhaling the fragrance that steamed up from the plate. “It smells wonderful.”

  Llysette took a bite, then smiled and looked up at the anxious Victor. “Merveilleux.”

  Victor bobbed his head. He was happy.

  And, sitting across from Llysette, with great food before me, so was I.

  16

  THE REST OF the week passed uneventfully, and so did the beginning of the following week. In fact, we got to Thursday in blissful quietude. Neither rain nor snow fell on Vanderbraak Centre, and while it froze at night, the frost was gone before we left the house in the morning.

  Llysette reported that Dierk Geoffries had located a former choral director at the University of Assen who had retired the spring before and who was willing to fill in for Beau Jonn. No one sent me any mysterious packages or letters or briefing materials. As Harlaan had promised, I did see a few gray steamers, but at a distance—except for the one hidden under the maple across the back lawn and the field beyond, an older gray Spazi steamer that was there almost all the time.

  I'd also done some more ghost-projection-related research and by Wednesday night had come up with a system. By scanning an image, then converting the codes to a log base, which reflected the image parameters, and then changing certain aspects, by feel, nothing more, I got so I could create projected images that looked like what I'd scanned. Complex, but it did work. A good mathematician could have done it in an hour or so, but . . . it worked, for whatever reason, and I've always been one for making things work first and worrying about how I got there later. That, I reflected, was also how I'd gotten into a lot of trouble, and on more than one occasion.

  Since that Thursday was the third one of the month, when the Music and Theatre Department had its monthly faculty meeting, I didn't get lunch with Llysette. I made do with a sandwich from the student centre and graded essays and quizzes until it was time for Environmental Politics 2B. Because the temperature was just above freezing, the classroom in Smythe was boiling. I couldn't believe Mondriaan thought the room was cold, but as we passed in the entryway, he had his winter coat buttoned up to his chin. It was a good thing his family had fled west, rather than to Russia—and that they'd escaped before the fall of the Low Countries. Ferdinand didn't care that much for painters and their families, but then, Ferdinand didn't seem to care much for any kind of art except for instrumental suites that glorified the Hapsburg empire or statues of its heros and emperors.

  Class went as planned, if more smoothly, because the korfball team had left at noon to travel to Asten for some sort of preseason tournament. After class I graded a few more papers, and then went to pick up Llysette. Dinner would be rushed because Gregor Martin's production of Hamlet opened that night, and Llysette had promised to attend. I would have gone with her, regardless, but I was interested in seeing the production, because Gregor had set it in the mid-1800s. That should have made sense, since the Swedes had faced a similar crisis with the sudden death of Charles XIV in 1835, except young Oscar I hadn't had to contend with an uncle, only the Prussian-backed coup and attack against Denmark that had required Sweden to effectively annex Denmark after the assassination of the Danish royal family and the murder of far too many Danes. Still . . . I wanted to see how Gregor managed to integrate it with history.

  Llysette, surprisingly, was waiting as I drove the Stanley up to the music and theatre building. She was also smiling.

  “Good day?” I asked as she slipped into the front seat and leaned across to brush my cheek with her lips.

  “Mais oui. Marlena van Hoff, she won the New Bruges competition for the Association of Teachers of Singing. Also, Terese Stewart will be coming on Monday, or earlier, and already the music she has.”

  “Is she staying with us?”

  “Non. This I did not know, but her sister lives in Zuider, and with her she would rather stay. I told her that we would drive her to Asten when we go to St. Petersburg. You would not mind that, Johan?”

  “Heavens, no.” I did like the idea that she wouldn't be staying with us, since Fraulein Stewart was a most astute woman, and might well notice our protective Spazi detail, something I really didn't want to explain. “That only makes sense.”

  The wind was stronger up on the hill, and almost blew Llysette's scarf right off her when she stepped out of the Stanley in our driveway. I left the steamer by the door.

  Llysette shivered even after we were inside, and made for the parlor and the woodstove, still radiating some heat. I followed her and added two more logs, before heading to the kitchen, filled with the aroma of baking and spiced beef.

  I'd asked Marie to make us a beef pie for dinner—I paid extra for that, but on nights like this one, when we were rushed, it was well worth it. So I had the salad ready, with a glass of wine—Sebastopol cabernet—and the whole dinner on the table even before Llysette was quite sure she wanted to leave the comfort of the parlor.

  “First diva of Columbia,” I called, “dinner is served.”

  “Johan . . . that is not of humor.” Those were her words as
she entered the kitchen.

  I grinned because she couldn't keep the smile out of her eyes.

  “Impossible you are.”

  “To impossible academics.” I raised my wineglass, and we both laughed.

  Llysette took a sip of the cabernet, then several bites of the meat pie before she spoke. “I was hungry, I think. A long day it has been. Good, but long.”

  “You wish we didn't have to go to the play tonight?”

  “I promised that we would go. We did not see his last.” “No, we didn't.” Gregor's last production had been something by the rising West Kansas playwright J. Francis Hogan, but I couldn't remember the title. That had been when Llysette and I were in Deseret the second time, and she'd performed at the St. George Opera House.

  So, after eating and a quick cleanup of the dishes, a few moments of stacking papers in the study and unloading my briefcase while Llysette freshened up, we were back in the Stanley, heading down Deacon's Lane and over the River Wijk bridge back into Vanderbraak Centre. We got one of the last spaces in the lower car park and struggled to the music and theatre building against the gusty wind, not particularly cold, but strong.

  While I was getting the tickets, Llysette stepped aside to say something to Dierk Geoffries, who was standing to the left of the box office wicket, doubtless waiting for his spouse.

  As I turned, tickets in hand, I saw Gertrude—one of the university zombies—marching toward the main door to the theatre.

  “Gertrude?” I asked gently.

  She stopped and turned. “Yes, sir?”

  “If I might ask, why do you come to operas and plays?”

  “Professor Martin said I should, sir. He said I would feel better.” Gertrude waited, as zombies always did, for the next question or order.

  “Do you?”

  “I don't know.”

  “I hope you do tonight.”

  Gertrude just waited.

  “Go and enjoy the play.”

  She turned from me and headed for the door.

  “How terrible,” Llysette said, slipping up beside me.

  “I don't know. I've seen her cry at your opera and when you gave a recital. I've never seen a zombie cry. Maybe Gregor is right.”

  “Peut-être . . .”

  “You think he just wants a bigger gate?”

  “Even Gregor . . . I do not think—” Llysette stopped and touched my arm, turning as a small and dapper man with wispy silver hair stepped toward us. “Georges, this is my husband Johan. Johan, this is Georges Almorire. He is the new choral director.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Doktor.” Almorire gave a quick bow from the waist and straightened with a warm smile. “You don't look as imposing as your reputation, and that probably means you're more so.”

  I wasn't quite sure how to handle that. “In a college, students always creatively expand things, particularly reputations. I'm just a professor of applied politics and ecology, trying like every other professor to impart some glimmer of enlightenment.” I laughed gently.

  “Don't we all? Don't we all?” Almorire replied. “Your lady is most accomplished, and I understand that she will be singing at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg in a few weeks.”

  “She will. I'm looking forward to it.”

  “You should. You should.” He bowed and then eased away toward Blanding Aastre.

  Blanding merely inclined his head to us as the two handed their tickets to the student usher and entered the theatre. We followed. Our tickets put us halfway back in the two seats closest to the aisle on the left.

  Gregor had definitely made changes. Fortinbras was no longer a Norse fortune-seeker, but an Austrian archduke eager to expand the empire's borders, while Polonius wasn't so much an old pompous fool as a scheming courtier looking to position himself to survive the coming disaster. Ophelia's madness came as much from her insight into her father's duplicity as from Hamlet's indifference and apparent cruelty, and Claudius had poisoned Hamlet's father because the old king refused to understand the danger from the south—Austro-Hungary. In a way, it made sense historically, but Gregor's substituted lines, few as they were, weren't up to the original.

  Afterward, we went to find Gregor, which wasn't hard, because he was standing on one side of the lobby, surrounded by a mix of students and university faculty. Once the crowd thinned out, we stepped forward.

  “Most powerful,” Llysette offered.

  “Congratulations, Gregor.” After looking over my shoulder, I asked, “Why did you tell Gertrude to come to the plays?”

  “Who?”

  “The zombie woman groundskeeper.”

  This time Gregor was the one to lower his voice. “Because I thought it would help her. I told her to come to the music concerts and the plays, especially the musical events.”

  I didn't know quite what to say to that.

  “If good music won't help a zombie reclaim her soul, then it certainly can't hurt her.”

  “Gregor!” someone called.

  “A good performance,” I reiterated as I stepped away.

  Llysette gave me a quizzical look, one I didn't respond to, except by squeezing her hand. I needed to think for a minute—or longer.

  I left the theatre that was really more of a recital hall than a true theatre still pondering Gregor's words. The drama professor had never been one of my favorite people, arrogant as he sometimes was, but I'd seen Gertrude cry at Llysette's recitals and productions, and zombies weren't supposed to cry. Emotion was beyond them. Certainly, Gertrude mostly acted like a zombie . . . but was she becoming more human? Was Gregor onto something?

  When we were in the Stanley on the way across the river and back up Deacon's Lane, Llysette finally broke the silence.

  “You are thinking, Johan.”

  “About zombies, about what Gregor said.”

  “Johan . . . a zombie, she does not have to remain such.”

  I winced, if silently. In a way, Llysette had been part zombie, part of her soul stripped away by Ferdinand's torture chambers and ghosting experiments—until I'd given her back part of another soul, not that I'd intended quite that. “We know that. I'd just never thought that music and drama might have the same effect . . . over time.”

  “That . . . it would make sense,” Llysette pointed out.

  “It would. And no one would ever think of it, because who would expose zombies to the passion of music and drama?”

  “C'est vrai. . . .”

  I reached out across the seat and squeezed her hand. She squeezed mine in return, and for the moment we were almost as one.

  The wind on the hilltop was stronger than when we'd left. While I moved the Stanley into the car barn and then topped off the water tanks, Llysette opened the house.

  When I finally finished and entered the house, she was standing in the archway between the parlor and my study, her head tilted, her brow furrowed. “Someone, like before, je crois . . .”

  While everything in the study seemed to be in its place, as had Llysette, I felt like something was different. I touched the casing of the difference engine, but it was cool and had not been used recently, not in the last half hour in any case.

  Llysette frowned. “Someone, they have been here.”

  After checking all the outside locks, I returned to the study. “The locks were still set.”

  Llysette raised her eyebrows.

  “I know. That doesn't prove anything.” Next, I turned on the lights and looked out onto the terrace from the study. The terrace was empty.

  Then I went out with a hand-flash. Llysette, shivering without her coat, followed. There was a single set of footprints in the frost on the grass. The footsteps vanished at the edge of the lawn, where the intruder had stepped over the low stone fence into the field beyond.

  Back inside, after relocking the doors, I turned on the difference engine, but so far as I could tell, nothing had been altered, and none of the hidden files had been opened. That meant only that the intruder hadn't found t
hem, or was far better at difference engine programming than were Bruce and I. So I turned the machine back off, checked all the locks once more, for all the good that would do, and then turned off the lights in the lower level before climbing the steps to the master bedroom—and Llysette.

  Who had it been? What had he wanted? I doubted that this intruder had been a Spazi type. Given the Spazi surveillance, I had to wonder how he'd gotten in, and especially how he'd gotten away. That the intruder had managed it didn't exactly boost my faith in Harlaan's operations.

  Still . . . there wasn't much else I could do, not then. But . . . I worried, and it took a long time to drift off to sleep, even with Llysette's help.

  17

  THE NEXT MORNING was sunny, warmer, and calm, and the footprints in the frost had vanished before I went out to fire up the Stanley. The gray six-wheeled Spazi steamer was under the trees on the far side of the field, but I had to wonder exactly how much good Harlaan's surveillance detail was doing.

  When I went to the door to call Llysette, she was standing by the foyer closet, wearing a gray woolen skirt with a green blouse, and a gray jacket, in which she looked wonderful, and which she promptly swathed in her winter coat before stepping outside to get into the Stanley.

  “It's not that cold,” I said cheerfully, as I eased the Stanley down the drive and out onto Deacon's Lane. “And, besides, it's Friday.”

  “The north pole, you would say it is not cold, Johan.”

  “Remember—in two weeks or so we'll be in St. Petersburg.”

  “Do not remind me what I do for art.”

  “All right. I won't,” I said cheerfully.

  “Johan . . .”

  I laughed, and so did she.

  I really didn't need the kerosene, but after I dropped off Llysette, I headed down to Piet's Columbian Dutch Shell to top off the Stanley's tanks. What with rising prices and unsettled times, I didn't want to be caught short, although I did have two ten-gallon tins stored in the car barn.