On Monday morning, I made it through my run and exercises, and fixed both of us breakfast by seven—not bad considering that we hadn’t gone to sleep all that early. While I ran, Llysette slept, or tried to. She still had the quilt pulled around her ears even after I had breakfast on the small table and the aroma of coffee filling the kitchen.
“Young woman,” I called up the stairs. “Your coffee is ready. So are your fruit, toast, and poached eggs.”
I thought I heard a muffled groan, and I called again. “Time to rise and shine, young lady.”
“Young I am not, not this morning, but coffee will I have.”
She clumped down the stairs, in slippers, and slouched into the chair on the other side of the small breakfast table, sipping the coffee and ignoring the food. I had hot chocolate, bad for my waistline, but I felt virtuous after my heavy exercise.
“What are you thinking?”
“Many things. The students, now they are getting sick, and they cough in my face. I tell them to get well and not bring their illnesses to me, but still they do. John Wustman, the pianist-coach, he will be here next week for master classes.” She shrugged tiredly. “Many students do not know their music, and now come the midterms, and after that, the opera. Then I must start the rehearsals for the Christmas gala, and that music they have never opened.” After sipping more coffee, she speared an orange slice, from probably one of the last oranges we would see for a’ while.
“They never think ahead.”
“Think … what is that?” She dipped her toast into the half-runny eggs.
I poured more coffee into her mug, and she smiled. “Thank you, Johan. It is nice not to fix the breakfast.”
I didn’t comment on the fact that I doubted she had breakfast if I didn’t fix it.
After we finished, Llysette took a shower while I scraped and washed the dishes. Then I raced upstairs and hopped into the shower while she struggled with her makeup.
I dropped Llysette by her house just before eight and headed back to town and Samaha’s for my paper. There was a space right outside Louie’s emporium, and I dashed in.
After nodding to Louie, I pulled out my Asten Post-Courier and left a dime, taking a quick glance at the headlines before even leaving Samaha’s. The Derkin box was empty; another day had passed without my learning who Mr. Derkin was.
The newspaper headline was bland enough: “NO COMPROMISE BETWEEN DIRIGIBLES AND JETS.” Since I could guess the content of the story, I folded the paper under my arm and walked through the blustery wind back to the Stanley.
Llysette’s steamer was not yet in the faculty car park, I noted as I parked the Stanley in a vacant space closest to the Music and Theatre building. With my folder in hand, I trudged to my office. Although the main office was open and Gilda’s coat was on the rack, I did not see her. There was a message from David, indicating that Tuesday’s departmental meeting would start at a quarter to four instead of four o’clock sharp.
I took it and made my way upstairs to my office. There I briefly checked the paper.
There was almost nothing new in the Asten Post-Courier, not about Babbage fires or political gambits, except for an editorial warning Speaker Hartpence to beware of sacrificing the long-held Columbian ideal of free trade to short-term political goals. With the usual Dutch diplomacy, it did not actually accuse the Speaker of political idiocy.
Then I looked over the master class schedule. Gregor Martin appeared to be free until ten. I picked up my leather folder and headed back out. Gilda waved, and I waved back.
Gertrude and Hector were mulching the flower beds beside the brick walk. As usual, Gertrude wore the unfailing smile and Hector the somber mien, but their hands were quick, and they worked unhesitatingly, taking care to ensure that the wind did not scatter the bark chips onto the bricks of the walk.
“Good day,” I said as I passed.
“Good day, sir,” chirped Gertrude, and I wondered what personality disorder had rendered her a de-ghosted zombie.
Gregor Martin’s office was in the side of the building away from the music wing, and probably only the same size as my office, for all that he was head of an entire area and I was only a subprofessor. His door was open, and he was pacing beside his desk as I rapped on the door frame.
“Yes.”
“Johan Eschbach, Natural Resources. We met after several productions last year. I’m also a friend of Llysette’s.” I extended my hand.
He ignored it. “What do you need, Johan?”
“Well, Gregor, I need to know whether a student absolutely has to take Introduction to Theatre before taking the Two-B course.”
“It’s a prerequisite.”
“Even for an arts school graduate?”
Surprisingly, Martin shrugged. “You know, I really don’t care. Most of them know nothing about theatre, not in the performing sense. You have a student who wants to try, I don’t care. I’m tired of protecting them from themselves.”
“Is this a bad time?” I took the chair by the desk, and he actually sat down. If Miranda Miller had been right, and all the new faculty had secrets too heavy to bear, what secret weighed down Gregor Martin?
“No worse than any other.” He picked up a black pencil and twisted it in his fingers.
“You came here from the Auraria Performing Arts School. I imagine it was a shock.”
“You imagine?”
“I came from the capital, good old Columbia itself, and found that most of the students knew very little about politics, and cared less. Why would it be any different in the theatre? Vanderbraak Centre isn’t exactly the great white way of New Amsterdam or the musical Valhalla of Philadelphia.”
“You’re right. But it’s worse in theatre. They all have this … this Dutch stolidity.” He set down the pencil and waved his hands, almost disconnectedly. “They can’t even imagine being something other than what they are. Theatre is the art of creating a different reality. How can you create a different reality when you can’t even imagine its possibility?”
“What is, is. Is that it?”
“More like what isn’t, isn’t—but it has to be for good theatre.”
“What about a sense of wonder? Take ghosts,” I offered. “We see a ghost, and whether we like it or not, it exists. You can’t touch it, exactly, and you can’t tell exactly when it will appear. Doesn’t it make you wonder?” I shrugged. “But you talk about … what if there were a world where there were no ghosts? How would that change things? I asked that in a class. No one knew. They hadn’t even thought about it.”
“That’s it. They don’t even think about it. How could you envision a Hamlet without the impetus of his father’s ghost?”
“That could be rather discouraging. What do they do when they see Professor Miller’s ghost? Just look and plod on?”
He nodded. “I asked one of them to really look at her ghost before it disappeared. He’s cast in Hamlet next term. You know what he said?”
“I’m afraid to guess.”
“‘It’s just a ghost.’” Martin slammed his hand on the desk. “It’s just a ghost!”
“Sad about Miranda,” I mused. “Now she’s just another ghost.”
“I don’t know that the woman was ever alive—always walking around with that self-pitying air, as though the world were about to crush her.”
“Perhaps it was,” I said. “She was born to money, widowed young, and forced to raise and educate two children.”
“Lots of people do that, and they don’t carry the weight of the world around so that everyone can see.”
“But was that enough to make someone want to kill her?”
“No. I doubt that.” Martin leaned forward across the desk. “What did you do in government, Johan?”
“Before they ran me out, I was in charge of environmental matters. Why?”
“Because you’ve scarcely said ‘good day’ to me before now.”
“I didn’t have a student who had questions, and your reputation is not exactly as the most approachable—”
“Ha! Well, that’s true. So why are you worried about who killed Miranda?”
“I’m attached to Llysette, and she’s single and attractive, and no one knows who killed Miranda or why. Do you blame me?”
“Do you suspect me?”
“No,” I answered truthfully. “But you’re probably pretty observant, and you might have seen something.”
“You don’t trust the watch?”
“It’s not a question of trust. They may even have a suspect, but they won’t arrest whoever it might be unless there’s evidence. The good Dutch character, you know. Without evidence, no arrest.” I laughed. “Of course, once there’s any evidence at all, it’s rather hard to change their minds. For now, though, legalities don’t protect Llysette.”
“You have a point there. Not a very good one, but a point.” He frowned. “You can believe me or not. I was in the lighting booth, and I didn’t see anyone, except for the students. Martin Winston was one, and the other was Gisela Bars. They were with me the whole time. And I don’t know why anyone would even bother with Miranda. I really don’t. She tried to flirt with you, and with Branston-Hay, and with Henry Hite, but you never had eyes for anyone except Llysette, and they love and honor their wives, at least so far as I know. Me? She never looked in my direction, thank heavens. With Amy, that was probably a good thing.”
“Amy is your wife?”
He nodded. “She got a job as an electronics technician with the state watch in Borkum.”
“Yes.” I waited.
“That’s it. You know what I know. That’s also what I told the watch.” He stretched and stood. “Have any ideas about getting acting students to think about creating reality?”
I stood, following his lead. “Could you play-act? Make one of them a ghost,
and insist that the others treat him or her like a real ghost? And start knocking points off their grades for every unrealistic action they take?”
“You believe that would work?”
“I don’t know, but a lot of them live only for grades. Make it real through the use of grades—sometimes that works.”
“Obviously a graduate of the school of practical politics.”
“Theory often doesn’t work, I’ve found. And Dutch students do respond to practical numbers.”
He actually grinned, if only for a moment, then bowed.
I found my way back to my office, noting that the two zombies had finished mulching the flower beds along the one walkway and were working on those flanking the stairs up to the Physical Sciences building. Gilda waved as I passed her office and climbed the stairs.
When I got back to the Natural Resources building, David was nowhere around, as was so often the case, and Gilda was juggling calls on the wireset console.
“Greetings, Johan. Why so glum?” asked young Grimaldi from the door of his office. His gray chalk-stripe suit and gray and yellow cravat marked either his European heritage or natural flamboyance. I wasn’t sure which.
“I just had a meeting with Gregor Martin. He actually smiled once.”
“He does sometimes. He’s actually a pretty good director, but I’d be grim if I had to work with our students in theatre, too. It’s bad enough in geography and natural resources. One of them wrote that a monsoon was a class of turbojet bomber in the Austro-Hungarian Luftwehr.”
“He’s probably right.”
“But in geography class?” Grimaldi laughed. “See you later. Did you get David’s note?”
“Which one?”
He laughed again, and went back into his office, while I unlocked my door and stepped inside, stepping on a paper that had been slipped under the door. I picked it up—Clarice Reynolds was the named typed on the cover sheet—and shook my head. Despite written instructions on the syllabus directing students to leave papers in my box in the department office, some never got the word.
I set the folder on the corner of the small desk and sat down. After looking blankly out the window for a long time, I finally picked up the handset and dialed, listening to the whirs and clicks until a hard feminine voice answered, “Minister vanBecton’s office.”
“Yes. This is Doktor Johan Eschbach. I have discovered that I will be in Columbia City on Thursday, and I thought I might get together with Minister vanBecton sometime in the late afternoon.”
“Just a moment, please, Doktor.”
I found the tip of my fountain pen straying toward my mouth, but I managed
to stop before I put more tooth marks on the case. Outside, the clouds were thickening, but it was still probably too warm for snow.
“Johan, what took you so long? You got your invitation on Friday.” Again, vanBecton’s voice was almost boomingly cheerful.
“On Friday, you may recall, I was in Columbia. I did not actually receive the invitation until Saturday, and I didn’t think you wanted to be bothered over the weekend.”
“I’m in a bit of a rush here, but what do you say to stopping in around four o’clock? That will give you plenty of time to get dressed for the reception. Where are you staying?”
“Probably with friends, but that remains to be seen.”
“Many things do, but I look forward to seeing you on Thursday.” A click, and he was gone.
I looked up another number in my address book and dialed.
“Elsneher and Fribourg.”
“Johan Eschbach for Eric, please.”
“Just a moment.”
The clouds outside were definitely getting blacker.
“Johan—is it really you?”
“Who else? I called because I’ll be in town on Thursday. They invited the old hack to a presidential dinner.”
“You’re more than welcome to stay with us. Judith would like that. So would I. Even if you have to attend the dinner, at least we can have breakfast together on Friday. Can’t we?”
“I’d like that. How is Judith?”
“She’s fine.” He coughed. “I’ve got a client on the wire …”
“I understand. Can I stop by the house about five, before the dinner?”
“Sure. I’ll tell Judith. See you then.” And he clicked off.
I watched the clouds for a moment, then, before my eleven o’clock, collected the copies of the short test I planned to spring on my students, leafed through my notes, and skimmed the latest copy of the Journal of Columbian Politics. I tried not to hold my nose at the article entitled “Rethinking the Role of the Politician’s Personal Life.”
At ten before eleven, squaring my shoulders, I collected the greenbooks and the thirty copies of the test and marched over to Smythe Hall to do battle over environmental economics.
Once the class had filed in, I pulled the greenbooks from under the desk.
“Unnnnghhh …” That was a collective sigh.
I smiled brightly and handed out the greenbooks first, followed by the single sheet of the test. “You can answer one question or the other with a short essay. You have twenty minutes. Just answer one question,” I repeated with a caution created by past experience.
“But, Doktor, this test was not announced.”
“If you check the syllabus, you will note that it states that tests may be given in any class.”
“Unnnghhhh …”
I had the feeling, from the groans, from the distracted looks on students’ faces during the lecture following the test, and from leafing through a few of the greenbooks when I returned to my office, that not a few had neither read nor considered the assignment.
My two o’clock wasn’t much better, not when half the class failed to understand the distinction between pathways of contamination and environmental media.
After my two o’clock, rather than immediately deal with either exams or the papers I had collected in my last class, I walked down to the post centre. I could have gone at lunchtime, since Llysette had been invited to a working lunch by Doktor Geoffries to discuss the student production schedule for the spring, but instead I’d spent the time trying to scan through some of the journal articles—not that I would ever catch up. Not if I wanted to remain sane.
Constable Gerhardt was by the empty bandbox in the square, chatting with the same young watch officer who seemed to turn up regularly when I was around, thanks, I suspected, to Minister vanBecton. I nodded to them both, rather than tipping the hat I wasn’t wearing, since it still wasn’t cold enough to wear one.
The chill wind had been promising snow for more than a week, but we had gotten neither cold rain, sleet, nor snow—just continuing cold wind—although the thick clouds to the northwest looked more than usually threatening. Despite the blustery weather and the few leaves hanging on the trees, the grass in the square was raked nearly spotlessly clean; even the hedges had been picked clean, as usual.
The lobby of the post centre was almost deserted, with only a gray-haired, stocky woman standing at the window. I unlocked and opened the postbox. Besides the monthly electric bill from NBEI and the wireline bill from New Bruges Telewire, there were two legal-size envelopes. The brown one had no return address. The other had the letterhead of International Import Services, PLC. Both were postmarked “Federal District.”
I tucked all four into my black leather case, which contained, generally, my lectures and materials for the day.
“Ye find anything interesting?” asked Maurice.
“You always ask, and you always see it first.” I grinned at the post handler. He grinned back, as always.
I walked quickly back to my office, my breath steaming in the afternoon air. I waved to Gilda as I passed the front office.
“Doktor Eschbach, Doktor Doniger was looking for you.”
“Is he in his office?”
“For a little while, I think.” She looked over her shoulder quickly, as if to confirm her statement. Her shoulders were stiff.
I knocked on the frame of the half-open door. “You were looking for me?”
“Yes, Johan. Please come in.”
I shut the door behind me and looked around the paper-piled office. David believed in horizontal filing. Although he didn’t invite me, I sat down in the single chair anyway.
Before he could get started, I said, “I’ve been invited to a Presidential Palace dinner on Thursday. So I’ll have to make up Thursday’s and Friday’s classes one way or another.”
“You always do, Johan, and I will tell the dean. She will be pleased that our faculty continues to travel in such exalted circles.” He smiled.
I smiled and waited. Then I added, “Gilda said you were looking for me.”
“Johan, I read your commentary in the last Journal of Columbian Politics. Don’t you think it was a trifle … unfounded?” He leaned back in his creaky swivel and puffed on the long meerschaum, filling the office with intermittent blasts of air pollution, the kind I’d once been charged with reducing when it occurred at industrial sites.
“Commentaries are by nature unfounded. Of course, I could have made it three times as long and proved it with examples.”
“Do you honestly believe that disposable glass is better than recycling metals? You even cited a recycling rate of almost eighty percent in major Columbian cities.”
“Obviously what I wrote was not so clear as I thought.” I coughed before I continued, glad that I had not followed my father’s pipe-smoking habits. “My point was not that either was environmentally better. You can make a case for either. I was pointing out that the Reformed Tories used the press and half-facts to build a case against the Liberals that had no factual support. In short, that despite all the environmental rhetoric it was politics as usual. Just like the ghost business is more politics than science.”
“The ghost business? That sad affair with Miranda Miller? Surely you weren’t mixed up with that, were you?”
“Only to the degree that one gets mixed up when a murder occurs before a friend’s recital. That wasn’t what I was referring to, however. I meant all these bombings and fires in schools across the country, all in the Babbage centers, and all protesting supposed ghosting research.”
David looked totally blank. “What does this have to do with the journal article?”
“They’re both political. You can make a case for or against disposable glass; you can make a case for or against ghosting research. Does the voting public really pay any attention to the facts? It’s a question of which side most successfully appeals to existing prejudices.”
“Johan, I’m still troubled about the glass business.”
“Most people don’t realize it, David, but glass is structurally a liquid. A very stiff liquid, to be sure, but a liquid. It is also virtually inert, and comprised mainly
of silicon and various oxides. Provided lead isn’t used, as in crystal, you can bury it or dump it and the only harm it can do you is cut you. Metals aren’t nearly as beneficial to the environment, and even with recycling, some are lost to the environment. So, claiming that recycled metals are more beneficial than discarded glass is misleading. Glass could certainly be recycled, and if it weren’t so cheap, that could have happened long ago. It may still happen.”
“Dean Er Recchus asked me if I thought that the commentary would hurt the fund-raising effort.”
“Not if it’s handled right. Just pretend you never saw it. Pretend that you have so many people writing in so many publications that you can’t keep track, and no one will think a thing. Make an issue of it, and I’m sure you both can find a way to hurt fund-raising.”
“Johan, I really wish you were not so … cynical.”
“Realistic, David. Realistic. Besides, if the dean gives you too much trouble, point out that no one made an issue of her rather close friendship with Marinus Voorster.”
“I couldn’t do that.”
I stood up. “Then why are you bothering me about an obscure commentary in a journal no one outside academia even reads?”
“Johan, I never meant to—”
“Good. I need to get ready for my two o’clock.” I left, nodding at Gilda with a polite smile that was probably transparent. While I had some indication of David’s lack of involvement with the whole ghost business, his toadying to Dean Er Recchus was inexcusable. He had tenure. Meddling much with his budget would have upset the university system budget committee. Just because he was worried that anything might upset the dean, as if he even understood what real pressures were—I shook my head at the thought as I opened my office door. And neither had even noticed the commentary until more than a month after it had been published. David was looking for an excuse, more than likely, but why? Because I didn’t put up with his academic small-mindedness?
Back in my office, after I put down my folder, I opened the International Import Services envelope first. It contained an invoice and a cheque. The cheque was for five hundred dollars; the invoice merely stated, “Consulting Services.” I didn’t recognize the name on the signature line—Susan something or other—but it was undoubtedly genuine. International Imports was a real firm, trading mainly in woolens, electronics, and information. It had a retinue of consultants worldwide, and probably half of them were actually export consultants. I’d always fallen in the other category. Still, five hundred dollars was equivalent to nearly a month’s pay as a professor, and I took a deep breath.
I studied the second envelope before opening it. Although I couldn’t be absolutely sure, the slightly more flexible feel of the paper around the flap indicated a high probability that it had been steamed open. If I had looked, I suspected that I
would have found that most of the envelopes with clippings had been similarly treated, at least recently. VanBecton’s people had been tracking me and knew my comings and goings. Presumably they had read my post, including the clippings, untraceably posted in the Federal District, probably at the main post center. The clipping itself was short.
ST. Louis (RPI)—A series of explosions ripped through the Aster Memorial Electronic Sciences Center at the University of Missouri at St. Louis shortly after midnight this morning. The ensuing fire gutted the building. Although no fatalities were reported, more than a dozen firemen were injured in the blaze that turned the skyline of St. Louis into a second dawn.
According to early reports, the explosions began in the Babbage wing of the center. Only last week, the chancellor of the University of Missouri system had defended UMSL’s policy of accepting Defense Ministry grants for psychic research.
Governor Danforth denounced the action as that of “ill-informed zealots.” Speaking for the Alliance for World Peace, Northrop Winsted added the Alliance’s condemnation of violence. Similar statements were also issued by the Midwest Diocese of the Roman Catholic Church and the Missouri Synod of the Anglican-Baptists.
At the slapping of rain droplets on my second-floor windows, I glanced out to the north, but the rain was falling so heavily I could barely see Smythe Hall across the green.
I slipped the clipping and the cheque into my folder, and, with a sigh, pulled out the stack of short papers I had collected from Environmental Economics 2B. Most of the students thought they understood economics and the environment. I did, too, until I’d actually had to deal with both.
I’d graded perhaps ten of the twenty-six papers by quarter to five, and was still chuckling over one line: “Money should be no object nor price no impediment to the continuation of our priceless environment …” While I understood the underlying sentiment, the writer—one Melissa Abottson—had inadvertently illustrated the fuzzy thinking of her generation. What she meant was that a pristine environment was worth a great deal, but that wasn’t what she had written. Priceless meant without a price, and if the environment were priceless then money was irrelevant—which certainly wasn’t what she meant. Likewise, the environment means the external conditions and objects surrounding us, or the world, and in the broadest sense, the environment, in some form or another, will continue, whether we do or not.
The problem with environmental economics is not one of willingness, but one of capability. No society has infinite resources, and certainly not a Columbia faced
with an aggressive New France to the south, a blackmailing Quebec to the north, Ferdinand in Europe, and the twin terrors in Asia.
With a last head shake at the naivete of the young, and at the recollection that I, too, had been equally naive, I left the stack on my desk, pulled on my waterproof, and took the umbrella from the corner. The main office was empty, and all the other doors were closed when I stepped out into the continuing light rain. My breath puffed white, and the cold felt welcome after the stuffiness of the building.
Umbrella in hand, I walked past the brick-stepped top landing of the long stairs down to the lower campus and then around the Music and Theatre building, stepping carefully to avoid the puddles and taking my time as I passed the closed piano studio. Even through the rain I could see that the Babbage console that had been in Miranda’s studio was gone.
I stepped into the main office of the Music and Theatre Department. “Martha, have you seen Llysette?”
“No. Oh, wasn’t she taking some students to the state auditions in Orono?”
I put a hand to my forehead. “I forgot.” I offered a sheepish grin. “She told me, and I forgot.”
Martha grinned back at me. “It can happen to anyone.”
“How’s Dierk taking the ghosting business?”
“It’s better now.” Martha frowned. “As a matter of fact, no one’s seen Miranda’s ghost for several days now.”
“I saw Dr. Branston-Hay removing his equipment. Was he studying the ghost?”
Martha looked around, then lowered her voice. “He asked us not to mention it. People get very sensitive about those sorts of things, even here.”
“I understand.” I nodded. “Some of the papers had stories about bombings at other universities’ Babbage centers.”
“Really?”
“Yes. There was one the other day in St. Louis.”
“How terrible.”
“You can see why Dr. Branston-Hay wants to be very careful. He probably only wanted a few people to know.”
“Just Dierk and me, and the watch, of course. Their video camera is still there.”
“I won’t say a word—not even to Llysette.”
“Thank you, Dr. Eschbach.”
Instead of heading home, I went back to my office and locked the door. I pulled down the blinds and took out the thick old hard-sided briefcase, filled with a melange of older publications. The small package of tools and the special wedge came out of the false bottom easily, and I slid the flap shut and pocketed the small, soft-leather case. After replacing the publications, I set the open briefcase on the corner of the desk. I took a Babbage disk in its case from the shelf and slipped it
into my pocket. It barely fit. After that I sat down and graded another dozen papers in the time until it began to get dark.
Contrary to popular opinion, nighttime is not the best time for marginally savory work. Early dinnertime is, especially on a university campus where most students are of thrifty Dutch stock and actually eat in the cafeteria.
I dialed Branston-Hay’s office number, but there was no response. So I picked up the special wedge and put it in my right pants pocket. Then I picked up my black leather case, half-filled with the day’s class notes, and stepped out into the hall. Once outside, I locked the door to the department, the former residence of some obscure poet—Frost, I think, was the name—and headed across the green to the west.
The main door to the Physical Sciences building was unlocked, as a number of laboratory courses ran late. There were always several early evening classes, but none, according to the schedule, involving Branston-Hay or the Babbage laboratories.
I walked to the main Babbage room and glanced inside. Perhaps half the consoles were occupied, mainly for word processing by students worried about various midterm projects, I guessed, although I did see one student struggling with some sort of flow chart.
The smaller laboratory, the one Branston-Hay used for research, was at the end of the corridor. I knocked, for the sake of appearances, and was surprised when a round-faced man with cold blue eyes opened the door.
“Yes?”
“I was looking for Gerald.”
“He’s not here at the moment. Could you check back later, or better yet, in the morning?”
“I’ll catch him in the morning. Thank you,” I said as I turned without even hesitating, knowing that I dared not.
Although the man I had never seen before had kept his considerable bulk between me and the laboratory, I caught a glimpse of it, enough to realize that I’d definitely missed more than a bet. The windows were painted black, and at least a dozen technicians were still working. There was some sort of strange apparatus that looked like a silver helmet, the kind they use to dry women’s hair. Everyone, even the man at the door, wore what looked like a metal hair net.
The doorkeeper wasn’t a Babbage type. The slightly thicker cut of his coat, and what it concealed, the fact that the other technicians wore no coats, and the guard’s flat blue eyes told me he was more at home in vanBecton’s office than in Gerald’s laboratory.
After I bowed and left, I made my way back toward the office section, around two corners. When I arrived at Branston-Hay’s office, I knocked sharply on the door, but there was no answer, and the thin line between the tiled floor and the heavy door was dark.
After glancing puzzledly around, as if mystified that my appointment had not been kept, and seeing no one, I slipped the lock picks out of my jacket pocket.
As soon as I had the door open, I stepped inside and locked it. Then I tapped the wedge loosely between the bottom of the door frame and the floor. The adhesive rubber would jam if anyone tried to open the door. Simple, and effective. I also unlocked the window, but did not open it. I did lift it slightly to make sure that I could. I have gone out windows before, although I would rather not.
I tried to remind myself of the old adage that you should never try to find it all out at once. Removals you do once or not at all, but information gathering requires far more patience and repetition. That’s one reason good espionage is far more difficult than murder.
The first step was activating the difference engine, not that dissimilar to my own recent model. After I turned on the machine and all the lights came on, and the pointer flipped into place on the screen, I typed in the initializing command, and smiled as the substructure menu appeared. Trying not to hurry, I scanned the directories until I found what I wanted, or, I should say, the absence of what I wanted.
If you attempt to hide something, you have to leave a keyhole, and that was what I needed. Branston-Hay hadn’t been that subtle. He’d assumed that any datapick would need to unscramble the keys. I could have cared less. I just wanted to copy them.
Still, it took almost half an hour before the machine began to copy what I needed onto the data disk I had brought.
While it copied, I helped myself to his desk. As I had suspected, everything—or almost everything—was strictly related to his teaching, and the office was as clean as when I had visited earlier.
I did find a folder of clippings, which I began to read.
COLUMBIA (FNS)—After meeting with departing Ambassador Fujihara of Japan, President Armstrong today suggested that the Reformed Tories would find that their yet-to-be announced initiative on reducing the VAT on tobacco exports, while desirable from the perspective of Far Eastern relations, was more of a public relations effort than a real step toward solving the growing Asian trade imbalance. Speaker Hartpence had no comment …
CHICAGO (RPI)—In his speech opening the National Machine Tool Exposition in Chicago, President Armstrong gently chided the Reformed Tories for even considering expanding product liability tort claim protection. According to the president, “Speaker Hartpence would strangle Columbian business to remedy a nonexistent problem.” Neither the Speaker nor his press aide were available for comment …
COLUMBIA (RPI)—Even while the general perception of President Armstrong has been that of a vigorous opponent of the Reformed Tories, slashing publicly at their
every weakness, his private meetings with members of the House have been exceedingly different.
“It’s almost as though the president were running for election to the House, and attempting to line up votes for Speaker,” said former Commerce Minister Hiler.
Since President Armstrong’s election last year, virtually every influential member of the House has been invited to an intimate and off-the-record dinner or luncheon at the Presidential Palace. While not all members have been willing to divulge the exact nature of the conversations, all indicate that the president was unusually attentive and nonpartisan, unlike in his public appearances, generally asking questions and listening …
MEMPHIS (SNS)—Today, in dedicating the Memphis Barge-Railway Terminus, President Armstrong denounced Speaker Hartpence’s policies as shortsighted and bankrupt. The president claimed that the Speaker is secretly considering accepting Asian revisions to the Law of the Oceans Treaty which would effectively close both the Sea of Japan and the South China Sea to Columbian traders and provide Chung Kuo and Japan with effective trade advantages in Asia in return for similar concessions to England and Columbia in the Caribbean and the Mediterranean.
“Such concessions, if true, would be ruinous,” declared Cecil Rhodes, IV, chairman of the Columbian Maritime Association …
Speaker Hartpence angrily denied the president’s charge, stating that he “has nothing to hide.”
SEATTLE (NWNS)—In accepting the frigate C.S. Ericson for the Columbian Navy, President Armstrong proclaimed “the continuing need for a strong Columbian presence across the waters of the globe.”
In a scarcely veiled criticism of Speaker Hartpence and Foreign Minister Gore, the president added, “Reducing the federal budget for ships such as this, or for the longrange electric submersibles such as the Fulton, is truly penny wise and pound foolish.” He went on to suggest …
“Both Minister Gore and Defense Minister Holmbek later denied that the submersible procurement budget was to be reduced …”
I flipped through the rest of the clips, jotting down dates, pages, and newspapers for all twenty-odd stories. By the time I had copied the dates of the stories, the machine, faster than the human hand, had copied a far vaster volume of material. I folded my notes, slipped them into my folder, replaced the disk in its case and the case in my pocket, returned the difference engine to its previous inert state, then removed the wedge and stepped confidently into the empty hall. The
only student I saw in the science building did not even bother to look up as he trudged toward the gentlemen’s facilities at the corner of the first floor.
I nodded to two students I did not know on my way across the green and back to my office, where I replaced the wedge on the shelf, closed and replaced the old case in the closet, and turned off the lights. I kept the lock picks, uneasy as they made me, in my pocket. They almost looked like a set of hex wrenches or screwdrivers, but any watch officer would know instantly what they were.
Then again, if they stopped me, it would either be a formality or lock picks would be the least of my problems. I picked up my folder and locked the office, leaving the uncorrected papers on my desk. For once, the students probably wouldn’t get them back at the next class.
The wind blew, and more drizzle sleeted around me, almost like ice, as I walked to the steamer. By the time I was inside the Stanley, I wished I had worn a heavier coat.
The roads were beginning to ice up, and visibility was poor at best. I was glad for the four-wheel option when I reached the hill below the house. No matter what they say about four-wheel drive not helping on ice, it does.
After I garaged the Stanley and went into the house, I lit off a fire in the woodstove in the main parlor, even before I checked to see what Marie had fixed. After unloading my pockets onto the antique desk and setting the disk case by the difference engine, I climbed upstairs, where I hung up my jacket and pulled on a heavy Irish fisherman’s sweater before descending to the kitchen.
The smell of steak pie told me before I even opened the warming oven, although it was probably drier than she had intended, but it still tasted wonderful. I ate it right from the casserole dish, washing it down with a cold Grolsch, both of which actions would have horrified my mother.
I did wash the dishes, though, before I headed into the study. Some Dutch habits die hard.
After I turned on the difference engine, and as it completed its powering up and systems checks, I pulled out the Babbage disk, wondering exactly what I had.
As I expected, the files were encrypted, but, if you know what you’re doing, that’s not a problem. Time-consuming, but not an insoluble problem. Why not? Because most nonalgorithmic systems used on a single machine have to have a finite and relatively easy key, and because, in most systems, you can go under the architecture and twiddle it. Of course, I made copies first.
The first interesting section shouldn’t have been on Gerald’s machine at all—his notes and speculations. Most Babbage types fall into two categories. There are those who know the machine so well that everything is custom Babbage language shorthand. I hate those, because it’s all unique. Branston-Hay was the other kind, the kind who play with difference engines, who document everything and link it all together. It’s as though they have to tell the Babbage engine how important they are—almost as bad as a politician’s diaries.
You can figure out either kind, because the way it’s structured gives it away in the first case, and the documentation in the second is certainly elaborate.
Still, it was well past midnight before I could break through, and that was as much luck as anything.
Some of the notes were especially chilling.
… headset design … multipoint electrode sensors to enhance the ambient magnetic field … A-H design overstresses basal personality …
… Heisler ignored possibility of disassociated field duplication … phased array of field sensors … duplication of field perturbations would emulate basal personality …
… personality implantation … greater density perfusion at high field strength and minimal transfer rate …
… Babbage electro-fluidics emulate field capture parameters …
That one made sense, given what I knew about ghosting. Instant death doesn’t create ghosts. It’s a stress-related, magnetic-field-enhanced personality transfer phenomenon, and Gerald had merely quantified the electronic and magnetic conditions.
The last entry in the notes was worse.
Empirical proof of capture—MM case. Theoretically, the psychic magnetonet should work in most conditions, since a new ghost is clearly the strongest … Practically the disassociator should also work … but the ethical problems preclude construction … Suspect it might not work unless the subject is in an agitated condition … No way to test at this point.
The rest of the files dealt with specifications. Two were actually schematics, and after reading the descriptions of the “basal field disassociator” and the “perturbation replicator” I realized I might need the lock picks again—if I weren’t already too late—or a good Babbage assembly shop. The third file that looked interesting was called a personality storage file, and required what looked like a modified scanner, although it didn’t look like any scanner I had ever seen.
There was also what looked to be an elaborate protocol of some sort attached to the personality storage file—again with explanations under such headings as “visual delineation file,” “image structure,” and “requirements for compression/decompression.”
I thanked Minister vanBredakoff for the two years undercover as a Babbage programmer in the Brit’s mercantile Babbage net. That and a skeptical nature helped.
Theoretically, neither the disassociator nor the replicator looked that hard to build. I began to sketch what I needed … and got colder and colder. Most of the components were almost off the shelf, although I’d have to check the specifications with Bruce as soon as I could. Then, almost as an afterthought, I sketched out the scanner I needed before I stumbled upstairs and into bed, leaving my clothes strewn across the settee under the window.
If Branston-Hay were doing what I thought, Miranda’s murder was almost inconsequential—unless she had known.
I lay in the darkness, in my cold bed under crisp cold sheets, listening to the cold sleet. Even the faint remnant of Llysette’s perfume somehow smelled cold.