Ghosts of Columbia (23 page)
Read Ghosts of Columbia Online
Authors: L.E. Modesitt Jr.
Tags: #Science Fiction, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Alternate History, #United States, #Literature & Fiction
The basic system didn’t take that long, a mere five hours. Testing it took longer, and I hoped Carolynne wasn’t watching, because I duplicated the replicate of her structure, then recoded it back to simple lines, and tried to project it.
Of course, it didn’t work. Nothing I ever try to program works the first time. Or the second. Or the third. On the fourth try, well after one in the morning, the system worked. That is, the antennas indeed projected an image, and it promptly collapsed.
So did I. The system part seemed to work, and I’d have to develop a better file/support structure if I really wanted to create the equivalent of ghosts. Why I’d want to do that was a question I didn’t have an answer for, except that my guts said it was going to be necessary, and I hadn’t made it as far as I had by ignoring gut feelings. Most people in dangerous occupations don’t. You figure out the reasons later, if you have the time.
Since I didn’t think very well with headaches and bright rainbows surrounding every light I looked at, I turned them all off and lifted one foot after the other until I reached my bed.
I looked up. A white figure hovered by the end of the bed.
“What are you doing here?”
“Was that a face to be opposed against the warring winds?”
“The ghost I created? I was just trying to see if the system worked.”
“Be governed by your knowledge … repair those violent harms … be aidant and remediate …”
“How?” I shook my head. “For most people, remediation in politics is revenge. The best seek justice, even when most, me included, would prefer mercy to such justice.”
“Then dissolve the life that wants the means to lead it.” With that she vanished.
Carolynne was definitely getting too familiar. It was a good thing Llysette wasn’t around. But then Carolynne probably wouldn’t have appeared with Llysette around. I wasn’t sure they would like each other. Respect each other, probably, but “like” was definitely another question. Forget about communicating. Was I communicating, or were Carolynne’s words only in my own mind? Was it her wish for me to create a ghost of remediation—or mine?
My head ached so much that I got back up and took three bayers. Carolynne did not say good night again.
D
ifficult” wasn’t the word for the trouble I had struggling out of bed on Tuesday. I pried my eyes open and climbed into my exercise clothes—uphill all the way.
ifficult” wasn’t the word for the trouble I had struggling out of bed on Tuesday. I pried my eyes open and climbed into my exercise clothes—uphill all the way.
Who would have thought that creating a ghost image for projection was so difficult? Everyone. I was just the one who thought it was possible. As for Carolynne’s idea of a ghost of remediation, that was clearly impossible. Even a ghost of justice and mercy—how would I ever do that? Yes, I understood that establishing and maintaining any image was difficult, if not impossible. But the image of justice and mercy, or even of integrity? Politicians did it all the time, but they didn’t have to have a logical structure to support it. And I certainly wasn’t about to touch remediation, except … didn’t I have to try?
Llysette had said I was always trying to change the world. Was that it, or was I merely trying to do the impossible until it killed me?
I sighed as I laced up the leather running boots. Some people run in lightweight, rubber-soled shoes, but that’s stupid. At least in my profession it is. You don’t run that much, but when you do it’s under lousy conditions with the world after you, and your feet need protection and support.
Obviously, I’d have to go back to the basics—just create a totally ethical personality. Probably it would have to be a takeoff on some combination of mine and Carolynne’s, because I had something to start with her image and at least I could fix in the program what went wrong with me. My mother and father didn’t get that choice, and at times I suspect they would have liked the option.
I still didn’t understand why my father had built the artificial lodestone. Had he been the one who read all the Shakespeare to Carolynne? Or were the lines from her theatrical background? Sometimes they made sense, and sometimes … I took another deep breath and stepped out into the cold.
All the way through my run and exercise, through breakfast, and through my shower, I kept thinking about how to layer the codes for a ghost personality.
Finally I shook my head. I needed to take a break, and besides, the disembodied spectre of all those ungraded tests on my desk was also beginning to haunt me. Should I have even worried about the tests? Probably not, but about some things we’re not exactly rational.
So, after dressing, I hurried into the study, flipped on the difference engine and roughed out the code lines I thought might work, and then printed them out and stuffed them into my folder.
Then I pulled on my coat and went out under the cold gray sky to get the steamer started. The air smelled like frozen leaves, and there was almost no breeze, a leaden sort of cold calm.
The Stanley started smoothly, as always, and I passed Marie in her old Ford on my way down Deacon’s Lane. We exchanged waves, and her smile cheered me momentarily.
After a quick stop at Samaha’s for the
Post-Courier,
I parked the Stanley in the faculty car park. Llysette’s Reo wasn’t there, but, thankfully, Gerald Branston-Hay’s black Ford was.
Post-Courier,
I parked the Stanley in the faculty car park. Llysette’s Reo wasn’t there, but, thankfully, Gerald Branston-Hay’s black Ford was.
On my way to my office, I nodded at Gregor Martin, but he only growled something about winter starting too soon and lasting too long.
Even Gilda looked dour.
“Why so cheerless?” I asked her.
“It’s like winter out, and it’s too early for winter.”
“That’s what Gregor Martin said.”
“For once I agree with him. For once.” Gilda picked up the wireset. “Natural Resources Department … No, Doktor Doniger is not available at the moment.”
Rik Paterken, one of the adjuncts, motioned as I pulled two memos and a letter from my box in the department office.
“Yes, Rik?”
“You have Peter Paulus in one of your classes, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“What sort of student is he?”
I frowned, not wanting to answer as truthfully as I should have. Instead, I
temporized. “Mister Paulus is able to retain virtually everything he reads. He does have a tendency to apply that knowledge blindly even when it may not be applicable to the situation at hand.”
temporized. “Mister Paulus is able to retain virtually everything he reads. He does have a tendency to apply that knowledge blindly even when it may not be applicable to the situation at hand.”
“In short, he can regurgitate anything, and he avoids thinking.” Paterken pulled at his chin. “He seems like a nice young man.”
“I am sure he is, Rik.” I smiled politely.
“He was asking permission to take the Central American Ecology course. He never took basic ecology.”
I shrugged. “He’s probably bright enough to pick that up, but I’d guess he wouldn’t get the kind of grade he wants.”
“That was my impression.”
“Then tell him that,” I suggested.
“You’re the one with the reputation for bluntness, Johan, not us poor adjuncts.”
I shook my head and went upstairs, wanting to see what, if anything, was in the newspaper. I knew the memos couldn’t contain much of value, and they didn’t. The letter was a more sophisticated pitch for a new ecology text. I tossed it along with the memos.
The
Post-Courier
headlines were a rehash of the airspace battle between the dirigibles and the turbojets, and the spacing requirements at the main Asten airport. Governor van-Hasten wanted to build a jetport and leave Haguen for dirigibles, but the legislature was balking at the funds, and the federal Ministry of Transportation had indicated no federal funds were likely.
Post-Courier
headlines were a rehash of the airspace battle between the dirigibles and the turbojets, and the spacing requirements at the main Asten airport. Governor van-Hasten wanted to build a jetport and leave Haguen for dirigibles, but the legislature was balking at the funds, and the federal Ministry of Transportation had indicated no federal funds were likely.
I leafed through the paper, still standing next to my desk, when my eyes glanced over the political gossip column. I froze.
… One of the more interesting developments, almost unnoticed in the commotion of the ceremonial dinner where President Armstrong announced his Japanese initiative, which, incidentally, the Speaker will probably have to swallow, involved a little-known former politico—one Johan A. Eschbach. Ostensibly, Eschbach is a professor at Vanderbraak State University, but who was at the big dinner, and who disappeared somewhere in the Presidential Palace between dinner and dessert? Watch this space …
That was another one of those surprises you really don’t like to find. Was it Ralston’s doing? Why? To offer me up to vanBecton? I put the paper down and looked at my desk. I had less than two hours to grade the quizzes, and I wasn’t giving any more this term. Period. As if I would be around to give any, at the rate I was going.
I plowed through both sets. Eighty percent of the grades were D’s. Too bad, but I really didn’t feel charitable. No one was providing
me
much charity these days.
me
much charity these days.
At ten to eleven, I finished entering the marks in my grade book and set the greenbooks in separate piles to return the next day. Then I locked my door and went downstairs. Gilda was off somewhere, and I went back out into the leaden gray day. The day seemed even colder than it had at dawn. But then everything was seeming colder.
Despite the cold and the ice, Gertrude and Hector were out on the green, carefully laying a sand and fertilizer mix on the icy bricks of the walk to Smythe. While it was more expensive than salt, the mix resulted in a lush lawn the rest of the year.
I just waved, not really wanting to hear Gertrude’s predictable statement about every day being a good day. They both waved back.
I smiled brightly as I walked into Natural Resources 1A. At least we’d finished the water cycle and were working on air, with an emphasis on deposition mechanisms and transport characteristics. I started right in.
“Miss Francisco, could you tell me what air deposition had to do with the Austro-Hungarian decision to require converters on internal combustion engines?”
Miss Francisco looked suitably blank.
“How about you, mister Vraalander? Any ideas?”
“Well, uh, sir … didn’t it have to do with the Ruhr Valley and the Black Forest?”
“That’s a start. Can you take it further, Miss Zenobia?”
“Doesn’t acid deposition combine with ozone from internal combustion engines?”
“It does. What does it do?”
“Oh … tree damage,” blurted out mister Vraalander. “Now I remember.”
I tried not to sigh. The rest of the class period was marginally better, just marginally, but perhaps that was because my mind was half on the column in the
Post-Courier.
Post-Courier.
Lunch was a quick bowl of soup at Jared’s Kitchen, followed by another quick look at the tests I’d already graded to make sure I hadn’t been too hurried. I hated the damned tests, and even more the fact that I had to give them to get the students to read the material. After that I scrawled out more Babbage code lines, amending my hastily printed beginning of the morning.
Then there was my two o’clock, Environmental Politics 2B. I had to collect papers—unfortunately, because it probably meant that very few of those stalwart souls had bothered to do the reading assignment. In turn, that meant I either had to talk a lot or badger them or surrender and let them out too early, which I generally refused to do because it might give them even more inflated ideas about the value of ignorance.
So I talked a bit about relative political values and their links to economic bases, and led them into speculation about why the Brits politically felt they couldn’t
afford too much environmental protection while the Irish were busy reforesting—yet both faced virtually the same threat from Ferdinand. What made the difference? Was it another hundred miles of ocean?
afford too much environmental protection while the Irish were busy reforesting—yet both faced virtually the same threat from Ferdinand. What made the difference? Was it another hundred miles of ocean?
I was still tired and hoarse when I walked back to my office. I grabbed a double-loaded cola from the machine and went back to work on codes until it was time for David’s weekly finest hour—the departmental meeting.
The less said about the departmental meeting, the better. I did not lose my temper. I only said one or two sentences, and I didn’t leave. Instead, I sat in the corner and jotted Babbage codes on my notepad, trying to work out the parameters of an ethical ghost while ignoring David’s long and roundabout evasions of the basic problem. I sat back and listened, half aware that the arguments hadn’t changed in a week. Finally David did what he should have done two weeks earlier.
“I’ve heard everyone’s comments and objections, but no one has a better idea. I will inform the dean that Natural Resources Three-B will be capped at zero next semester and that we will rotate between courses to be capped, but none will be struck.”
Unfortunately he didn’t quit while he was merely behind. “The next item on the agenda is EWE.”
Mondriaan groaned. He hated the Educational Writing for Excellence program. I just thought it was useless. Most university graduates can’t really write, and most never have been able to. It’s a delusion to think the skill can actually be taught at the collegiate level. Polished, perhaps, but not taught. Of course, I didn’t say that. Why make any more enemies? I had enough already.
After EWE, David proceeded to the department’s recommendations for library acquisitions because—what else was new—our recommendations exceeded our share of the acquisitions budget.
I continued to work on Babbage codes until the end of the meeting. No one seemed to notice.
After the meeting, I packed up my folders, decided to leave the Environmental Politics 2B papers behind on my desk, and walked to the car park. My resolve about tests hadn’t considered the papers I’d already assigned.
A watch steamer, sirens blaring, wailed out Emmen Lane toward Lastfound Lake. I wondered if someone had had an accident or if the locals were just testing their sirens.
At the bridge I had to wait as two heavy Reo steamers, gunmetal-gray paint and chrome trim shimmering, rolled westward across the Wijk and past me into the square. While they were from Azko, they somehow reminded me of Spazi steamers.
Marie hadn’t left me dinner, just a note explaining that she hadn’t been able to fix anything because I had no meat, no flour, no butter, and precious little of anything else.
I had apples and cheese, and opened a sealed box of biscuits from the basement. It filled my stomach, and my head stopped swimming, but I definitely missed that hot meal, especially after no real lunch and the way the day had gone.
Then I washed the dishes and began trying to assemble all the code fragments I had developed for a justice/mercy/integrity ghost. When I put them all together and completed the file profile, nothing happened. Nothing at all.
Then I discovered that I didn’t have the handshake between the profile and the system set up right, and that meant a minor rewrite of the system program I’d only finished the night before. Why had it worked the night before and not with the new ghost profile? Because I had created a more complex pronie—that was what I figured.
I tried again. The system worked, but all I got was a spiral that collapsed in on itself.
Probably I needed some sort of image. Carolynne’s profile had the image tied up with the rest, but I didn’t know how to do that. But … adding an image on top of everything else?
I turned off the difference engine and went to the kitchen for a bottle of Grolsch, probably bad for me, but things weren’t going right.
Halfway through the Grolsch, I tried again. Around eleven o’clock I got an image that looked like a one-eyed demon of some sort, even though I’d inputted, I thought, the graphic image of a man with a set of scales in his hand.
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