Ghosts of Columbia (29 page)
Read Ghosts of Columbia Online
Authors: L.E. Modesitt Jr.
Tags: #Science Fiction, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Alternate History, #United States, #Literature & Fiction
I did manage to lock the room door before dropping almost straight into a too soft bed that felt more like a hammock than a bed. But Vic wouldn’t have minded, and I was too tired to care.
T
he Albert Pick House had seen better days, probably back when it had been the Columbian flag hotel of the Statler chain, but it was still clean, and my room was three floors up, high enough to be off the street, low enough for some forms of emergency exit, not that I really wanted that. The videolink set was small. I supposed it worked, but I hadn’t bothered to check. Somehow even I wasn’t desperate enough to sit and watch video.
he Albert Pick House had seen better days, probably back when it had been the Columbian flag hotel of the Statler chain, but it was still clean, and my room was three floors up, high enough to be off the street, low enough for some forms of emergency exit, not that I really wanted that. The videolink set was small. I supposed it worked, but I hadn’t bothered to check. Somehow even I wasn’t desperate enough to sit and watch video.
With its fake Virginia plates, the steamer was safe enough in the hotel lot. They were actually copies of real plates, but since the originals were still in place on another Stanley, it wasn’t likely that anyone would care. I also had Maryland plates and a set from New Ostend racked inside the false trunk, all three sets made up in earlier, even more paranoid days after Elspeth’s death and right after I’d purchased the Stanley.
My timing had been lousy, since there was no practical way to do what I needed to on a weekend. So all I could do was scout and plan and ensure that everything would go like clockwork on Monday. It wouldn’t, of course, but planning helped reduce the uncertainty—and the worry.
Wearing the nondescript tan trench coat over my cheap, hard gray wool suit, a brush mustache, and a battered gray fedora, I left my closetlike room and walked down the hall. I noted the black plate across the lock of the room two doors down and wondered how long the hotel had been forced to seal it. After all, they couldn’t very well rent a haunted room to paying guests.
I entered the elevator, nodding at a young man with lipstick on his cheek and a cravat not quite cinched up to his collar. He hadn’t shaved, but he looked happy as he left the elevator in the lobby. I hefted the battered sample case that contained the documents I needed as well as several other items, and strolled across the not-quite-threadbare imitation Persian carpet.
The Bread and Chocolate pastry shop across the street provided two heavy nut rolls and bitter tea. I sipped and chewed until I finished all three and my stomach stopped growling.
Then I slowly walked up Fifteenth Street, turning northwest on New Bruges and pausing for a moment in Ericson Circle. The gray of my clothes fit right in with the sky and my mood. I had plenty of time, and there was no reason to hurry. I could have driven, but you don’t get the same feel for things when you’re insulated inside a steamer.
The pigeons looked at me from under every gray-painted lamppost, but they were city pigeons and didn’t move unless you almost stepped on them. Before long I reached Dupont Circle. The fountain in the circle had been drained and contained only dampened leaves, leaves that would have been removed had the fountain been in the square in Vanderbraak Centre or even in New Amsterdam or Asten, cities that they were. More pigeons skittered around the base of the fountain, and two old men leaned over a stone chess table like weathered statues.
A block up on New Bruges Avenue, holiday-sized flags were flying from both the Chung Kuo embassy and the embassy of Imperial Japan, across the avenue from each other just as they were across the Sea of Japan from each other.
According to my research, vanBecton lived in the upper Bruges area, uphill and behind the embassies. It was a long walk from downtown, but I needed the exercise, and the feel, and sitting around a hotel room would have driven me crazier. So I kept walking, keeping my eyes out for what I needed.
One thing I wanted to find was the local power substation. In Columbia City they’re generally disguised as houses, and most passersby don’t give them a second thought. You can tell by the power lines, though. On a dead-end half-street off Tracy Place, I found the substation that probably served vanBecton’s house before I located the house itself.
At first glance, the substation didn’t look much different from a normal, boxy, white-brick attempt at Dutch colonial, but there was a sloppiness in the off-white trim paint, a hopelessness in the way the lace curtains in the false windows were so precisely placed, and an un-lived-in air that permeated everything from the evenly placed azaleas to the cobwebs linking the porch pillars to the white bricks.
To me, those were more apparent than the faint humming or the power lines that spread from the brick-walled backyard.
I paused, resting my left leg on the low stone wall that contained the raised lawn, and balanced my battered case on my leg while I opened it and pretended to check the papers inside. I was actually studying the substation, making a few written notes and a lot more mental ones.
There were definite advantages to working in more affluent areas, and I intended to make use of every one of them. With my notes taken, I walked along the hilly, tree-lined streets.
Some houses had perfectly raked lawns and white-painted trim that gleamed, betraying the more northern origin of their owners. On others, especially those with pillars, the white paint almost seemed designed to peel, giving an aura of the lost South, the time that had begun to fade with Speaker Calhoun’s machinations.
Senator Lincoln only applied the last nails to the coffin, nails that had led to his murder by Booth, the Anglophilic actor. And yet, despite the fall of slavery and its lifestyle, vampirelike, the essence of the English south still seemed to drift through the Federal District, especially in fog, twilight, and rain.
Senator Lincoln only applied the last nails to the coffin, nails that had led to his murder by Booth, the Anglophilic actor. And yet, despite the fall of slavery and its lifestyle, vampirelike, the essence of the English south still seemed to drift through the Federal District, especially in fog, twilight, and rain.
On a cold hard fall day, more like winter, those houses seemed as out of place as a painted old courtesan at dawn.
I kept walking until I found Thorton Place, and vanBecton’s house. It was about as I had imagined it—an elegant, impeccably manicured, false Georgian town house with real marble pillars and slate walks and steps.
I didn’t appear to look at his house, instead sketching his neighbor’s side garden on a plain piece of paper while I continued studying the false Georgian. There were sensors mounted inconspicuously in various places. I really wasn’t interested in the sensors but in the positions of the wireset and power lines. The large maple with the overhanging limbs offered some intriguing possibilities.
After I finished the sketch and some brief notes, I made my way back down Newfoundland, the other cross artery leading back to Dupont Circle, and a memorial of sorts. The debate over that state’s admission had nearly led to war with both England and France, and only the advance of the Austrians on Rome had held off what could have been a catastrophe. Quebec still made threatening sounds about Newfoundland, sounds guaranteed mostly to extract trade concessions from Columbia.
Many of the houses on Newfoundland Avenue date from the fifties, with glass bricks and angular constructions that seem to lean toward the sidewalks. Nothing is so dated as past modernism. The demolition crew working on an old “modern” mansion confirmed that, as did my sneezes at the dust. Two empty steam haulers waited to be loaded with debris, and I had to cross the street to the eastern side to get back down to Dupont Circle.
When I finished sneezing, I stopped by Von Kappel and Sons, Stationers, where I browsed through the rag and parchment specialty items, finally selecting a heavy off-cream paper with a marbled bluish-green border. I also bought two dozen large envelopes, the ten-by-thirteen-inch kind with accordion pleats that can hold nearly a hundred pages of documents. The bill for the fifty sheets of classy marbled paper, two dozen matching envelopes, and the bigger document envelopes totaled $49.37.
The clerk didn’t quite sniff at my half-open trench coat and cheap wool suit, but he said as little as possible. “Your change, sir.”
“Thank you.” I put the bag under my arm and made my way across the circle.
Babbage-Copy was at the corner of Nineteenth and N, and they had machines and printers you could rent by the hour.
The balding young clerk put his thumb in his economics textbook and flipped a switch on his console. “Ten dollars. That’s for two hours. Copies are five cents a page on the impact printer.” He handed me a metal disk. “Put that in the control
panel and bring it back here when you’re done. Take machine number six.”
panel and bring it back here when you’re done. Take machine number six.”
He was back taking notes on a yellow lined pad even before I sat down. Why, with all the Babbage machines around, didn’t he use one for his notes? There was no telling. Some authors still write longhand, although I can’t see why. Maybe they’re masochists.
Still, I had to set up the week, and that meant starting with a simple one-page introduction—something to tease the reporters. I had some ideas, but it took me several drafts before I had a usable piece.
WHAT IS THE REAL PSYCHIC RESEARCH STORY?
A worldwide wave of fires and bombings has struck Babbage research centers dealing with psychic research. Every major political and religious figure has publicly deplored this violence, yet violence on such a scale is highly unlikely without the resources of some form of organization. Consider these issues:
What organization(s) or government(s) have an interest in preventing psychic research? Why?
Why are militarily related projects the majority of targets?
What has been the goal of such research?
Why has no information on the specific research projects and their results ever been made public?
What role has the Defense Ministry played?
What have the president’s budget examiners discovered, and why has that information not been released?
Further specific information will be forthcoming in response to the crisis.
The Spirit Preservation League
That no Spirit Preservation League existed was immaterial. It would, and certainly none of the organized religions were likely to gainsay its purpose.
Then I drafted the Spirit Preservation League announcements that would precede and follow—I hoped—the coming week’s actions, assuming that vanBecton and Ralston didn’t find me before I found them.
After I got all those completed, I had to hand-feed the marbled stationery to the printer. It jammed a couple of times, but I managed to get the paper feed straightened out, although it ruined several sheets of the impossibly expensive paper. I kept those—no sense in leaving unnecessary traces anywhere. Then I played with the machine to see if I could get a script facsimile, and it wasn’t too bad. So I printed the necessary names on the envelopes.
Coming after the cheap and shoddy diatribe of the Order of Jeremiah, I trusted the contrast in tone and the clearly high-quality, expensive stationery would begin to
plant the idea that more than a few individuals, crazy and not so crazy, were concerned about the political games being played around the question of psychic research.
plant the idea that more than a few individuals, crazy and not so crazy, were concerned about the political games being played around the question of psychic research.
After finishing the high-quality printing, I used the copier to make up ten sets of documents in two separate sets. I could only see a need for six, but if I had an opportunity to distribute extras, I wanted those extras handy. All the documents went in the case. No one looks at papers, and they wouldn’t look at mine either, unless they knew who I was. In that case, I was probably dead anyway.
During the whole procedure, the clerk never looked my way. He did check the meters, though, when I returned to the turnstile to leave.
“Those extra runs on the printer are a nickel each.”
All in all, another fifteen dollars gone, but money well spent, I trusted. With that cheerful thought in mind, and with very tired feet, I took a cab down to the Smithsonian, but I bypassed the Dutch Masters and went instead to the Museum of Industry and Technology. Even when you’ve seen it all, there’s something incredible about it—Holland’s first submersible, the first Curtiss aeroplane, the first flash boiler that made the steamer competitive with the Ford petrol car, the Stanley racer that smashed the two-hundred-mile-per-hour mark, the first steam turbine car pioneered by Hughes.
After I marveled at the wonders of technology, I did cross the Mall, looking past the B&P station to the Capitol, white against the gray clouds, to an art gallery, the Harte, which contained mostly modern works. They had a new exhibit, strange sketches by someone named Warhol. I wasn’t that impressed.
So I took a trolley back up to the Albert Pick House and collapsed onto the bed for a nap. I didn’t wake up until after sunset, when the comparative silence disturbed me. I took another shower and put on a clean shirt and underclothes but the same hard wool suit, and headed to the elevator, where I joined a couple on the lurching descent to the lobby. They both smelled of cheap cigarettes, and I left them behind almost as rudely as my attire would have dictated, quickly checking the full-length mirror before moving past the desk and toward the street. I looked like Peter Hloddn, all right, worn around the edges, not quite haunted.
Trader Vic’s was less than a block away, but it was too expensive and too highclass for Hloddn, the traveling ledger-man. Instead, I walked two blocks to a place whose name was lost in the neon swirls meant to spell it out. Inside, the dark wood and dim lights confirmed my initial impression of a tavern, not quite cheap enough for a bar, nor good enough to be a restaurant. I slipped into a side booth for two.
About half the men in the tavern wore working flannel; the rest wore cheap suits or barely matched coats and trousers. The women wore trousers and short jackets, and their square-cut hair made their faces harder than the men’s.
At the far end of the narrow room, two singers, one at the piano and the other a woman with a guitar, crooned out a semblance of a melody.
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