Ghosts of Columbia (70 page)

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Authors: L.E. Modesitt Jr.

Tags: #Science Fiction, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Alternate History, #United States, #Literature & Fiction

BOOK: Ghosts of Columbia
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“It’s your neck.”
Unfortunately, it was, but a lot of other necks were stretched under the knife as well. They just didn’t understand that.
At quarter to eleven I pulled the Reo up beside the red-faced wireset booth. No one was using the unit, and I walked over to it. No sense in letting someone decide to use it when Llysette’s life was possibly hanging on it.
At eleven-eleven the set chimed.
“Eschbach.”
“Take a steamer south on the expressway. When you get to Beehive Route Three, take it east. Once you see another steamer flying a purple banner, you may contact the Columbian embassy. When you’re satisfied, get back in the steamer and keep heading east. Follow the steamer with another purple banner. Stop when it does, and you will be contacted. Do you have that?”
“Expressway south to Beehive Three. East on Three, until I see the purple banner. Contact the embassy. Confirm Llysette’s safety. Then head east again. Stop when the next steamer with the banner does.”
“Correct.”
The line went dead.
Simple enough. What wasn’t spoken was equally simple. Once Llysette was free, my life was forfeit if at any point I tried to double-cross them. Somehow, I’d feel better, a lot better, once Llysette got into the Columbian embassy.
I wiped my forehead, damp despite the chill, looked at the pitifully small Reno, swallowed, and walked back to the steamer.
It sounded simple. I got to drive a small steamer south on the expressway and then out into the Fastness of Zion, along some back road, with no one following, not closely anyway.
Once the radio confirmed that Llysette was safe and I talked to her, then I would get back in the steamer and follow the first steamer I saw with another purple flag.
I followed 300 East south for three blocks, then turned east. Another five blocks found me turning onto the expressway south.
The traffic, for Deseret, was heavy, a mix of haulers, battered steamers, and glistening new Brownings, and I had to concentrate on driving, more than I had anticipated.
Beehive Route Three almost crept by me, and I had to take the ramp at a higher speed than I’d figured. The poor Reo shuddered as I applied the brakes to make the stop at the top of the incline.
I waited for a westbound tanker bearing the logo “Deseret Fuels” and easily several dozen times the size of the Reo. Then I turned behind a gray Browning that left me in the dust of the two-lane road that angled toward the mountains.
To my right, I could see a second flat lake, surrounded by factories, with smoke and steam pouring into the chill early-winter air. The higher reaches of the mountains framed by the front windscreen were mostly white.
I drove for more than a quarter of an hour, intermittently being passed, and drawing closer and closer to the mountains, taller than I realized. A glance in the rearview mirror told me that a glistening red steamer was sweeping up behind. The road on the other side was clear, and the red Browning swept past, then slowed. A purple flag popped from the side window and fluttered there. I just watched for a moment, then finally lowered my window and waved. What else was I supposed to do?
The red Browning accelerated out of sight even before I pulled out into a wide turnout on the right side.
I glanced around. The turnout was empty, except for a painted green metal drum for trash.
After opening the door and setting the radio on the roof, I cranked up the collapsible antenna. The frequencies were already set. I cleared my throat, my heart pounding.
“Embassy, this is Eschbach. Do you read me?”
After a moment of static, an answer squawked through the speaker: “Say again, please.”
“Embassy, this is Eschbach. Do you read me?”
“We read you, Minister. A little weak, but we read you. There’s someone who wants to talk to you.”
I hoped it was Llysette. Lord, I hoped!
“Johan?”
“Llysette?”
“Mais oui, mon cher… .
”Her voice was tired, but it sounded like her voice, despite the static.
“How is Carolynne?” No one else would know what I meant, and I hoped that she wasn’t too tired to understand.
“Ah, she and I are well. Did you know that once she sang for the First Prophet?”
I frowned and tried to call up a memory or an image … but only got a hazy sense of limelights. “I don’t recall that.”
“That was before she met the deacon.”
“Are you all right?”
“I am tired. I have some bruises. This was not bad. This was not so bad as the Fall of France.” She laughed gently. “It was not so bad as when you and I came to know Carolynne better.”
“You’re sure.”
“Certain
I am.”
I nodded. “You take care, and stay in the Columbian embassy until this is over.”
“Mais oui
. I do not like what you do.”
Neither did I. “I’ll be fine,” I lied.
“You must take care. You, we want you back safely.”
“I wanted you back safely.”
“We know. Take care,
mon cher
.”
“You, too. I’ll do the best I can. Just keep yourself safe.”
I finally flicked off the radio and glanced around the turnout. A battered black hauler rumbled past, its front hood wreathed in steam, then another new Browning, this one blue.
The radio antenna went down, the unit back into the seat beside me, and I eased the Reo out back onto Route Three, still headed east. All I could do was hope … hope that everything went right, knowing that, once again, it probably wouldn’t.
I drove steadily east for another ten minutes, until I needed a side road. Abruptly a cargo hauler pulled out in front of me, a square purple banner flying from the black-painted door mirror frame. I slowed to follow the big steamhauler.
Five minutes later, the hauler turned left, back north, along Beehive Six, and in less than ten minutes we were back on the expressway, headed north.
Perhaps three miles farther north, the hauler slowed and stopped under a bridge. I swallowed and stopped right behind it, then picked up the case, leaving the radio behind but triggering the transmitter with a blank signal. That might help.
I walked toward the hauler, the kind with a double cab and without windows in the back. The rear cab door on the shoulder side was open. I saw no one, and the front window was blackened.
I stepped up into the rear seat, empty, and with a partition between the front seats and the rear.
Nothing happened.
I sighed and closed the door, sitting there in the gray gloom of the enclosed space, unable to see who was driving, where I was headed, and where I was going. With a hiss, the hauler eased out into the traffic I couldn’t see.
O
n the narrow bench seat in the back of the hauler I bounced, occasionally steadying myself, as the vehicle turned off the expressway and began to wind through streets, presumably of Great Salt Lake City. The single door had no window. The odor of oil and heated metal seeped up around me, and the space was hot, especially with a wool suit coat and the plastique vest that didn’t really breathe. Even after taking off my overcoat, I felt faintly nauseated without any fresh air.
After a time, the hauler slowed, then stopped, and a rumbling screech followed. Then the hauler inched forward and lurched to a second stop. The screech of ill-lubricated metal punctuated more rumbling. The hiss of escaping steam indicated a shutdown. I waited.
Finally, a figure in a gray jumpsuit, wearing a gauzy sort of black hood over his head that concealed all but his general head shape, opened the door. “Minister Eschbach?”
“That’s me.”
“Follow me, please.”
Without much choice, I followed the fellow. He didn’t think much of me or my abilities—or knew I wouldn’t do much—because he scarcely looked in my direction as we walked through what seemed to be an industrial garage and down a narrow corridor to a door, which he unlocked.
“If you would.”
I stepped into the room—more like a prison cell, I supposed. No windows, a pallet bed, a shower nozzle over a drain surrounded by a curtain, and an exposed toilet. No sink. One towel hung on a wooden bracket on the wall, a bar of soap on the back of the toilet.
He stepped inside after me. “What’s in the case?”
“Material I thought I might need.”
“You might. Would you open it, please, and leave it on the floor?”
I did and stepped back, trying to sniff the air, which smelled like industrial solvents and chlorine combined.
He leafed through the papers. Despite the hood, I had the feeling his eyes were half on me—alert but very amateurish. Then he stood.
“What exactly do you want?” I asked. No sense in assuming too much.
“The ghost of the first Revelator. Your skills should be sufficient to locate and recall up his ghost.”
“Not Prophet Young?”
“He was the antiprophet who turned the Saints from the true path to Zion.”
I didn’t pretend to know that much about Brigham Young, but I had to wonder how the prophet who had built an independent nation out of the wilderness had set the Saints on the wrong path. “I’m not sure I understand… .”
“They’ve hidden it, but it’s there,” answered the tall figure. He shifted his weight and stated, as if he were quoting, “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, no one shall be appointed to receive my commandments and revelations in this church excepting my servant Joseph Smith, Junior.”
I waited, and I wasn’t disappointed.
“And if thou art led at any time by the Comforter to speak or teach, or at all times by the way of the commandment unto the church, thou must do it. But thou shalt not write by way of commandment, but by wisdom; and thou shalt not command him who is at thy head, and the head of the church.”
“I take it that means that there are no other prophets but Joseph Smith?” I tried to ask casually.
“Even an unbeliever understands that, and yet those hypocrites who strut in the Temple do not.”
I couldn’t imagine First Counselor J. Press Cannon strutting anywhere but kept my mouth shut.
“Even the Danites have forgotten the meaning of their motto.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know the motto.”
“It’s from the Book of Daniel: ‘They shall take the kingdom and possess it forever.’ President Taylor’s weaknesses will turn Deseret back to the Lamanites of the south and the Zoramites of Columbia.”
“And?” I asked gently.
“All that the prophet strove for will be lost. Once again, Sampson shall rise.
You wouldn’t know that, Gentile, but Sampson always rises again. Sampson Avard was one of the pillars of the early Saints, until the followers of Satan turned the prophet against him.”
“That’s all very well, but how do you expect me to locate a ghost that vanished more than a century ago?”
“You have that knowledge.” Abruptly he stepped back and closed the door. The lock clicked.
I closed the datacase and set it on the foot of the pallet bed and began to study the room, or converted toolroom. The walls were cinder or cement block, the floor ancient concrete. So was the ceiling. I checked the door—metal, solid core, steel-framed, with the hinges on the outside. Not impossible to get out of in a pinch, assuming there was some steel in the bed frame or that a few things on my person might assist, but the work would be laborious and noisy. A single lightbulb was set in a bracket above the door, but no switch was visible in the room.
The area had been prepared well, and in advance. I went and sniffed around the pallet bed. No scent of Ivoire, and that probably meant they’d held Llysette elsewhere. Good for her, not so good for me.
“You have that knowledge.” The certainty of those words chilled me. They weren’t asking me to create a ghost. They’d been told that I could find a ghost that had once existed, a very specific ghost. That was impossible. The first Revelator’s electromagnetic spirit field had long since dissipated, if it had even survived his assassination. Yet to escape, to have any chance of surviving, I had to do that. And that meant creating an “old” ghost from scratch. Subconsciously I’d figured out something along that line, but I’d thought the Revealed Twelve were political opportunists who’d wanted me to create a ghost for political purposes. Instead, I had theological fanatics who’d been set up by someone else. They still needed a ghost, but … fooling them would be hard, far harder than what I’d anticipated.
With a shrug I sat on the end of the pallet bed. I didn’t touch the scan-transparent blade that remained in my belt or anything else. There was no reason to, yet.
Perhaps a half hour passed, and I finally checked my watch—twenty minutes. I opened the case and began to study the notes I’d taken.
Some time later, the door clicked, and a shorter figure stood there.
“If you would come this way, it’s time to begin your work.”
I didn’t ask if the work was mandatory.
The second door in the corridor was open. He gestured, and I stepped inside. Light poured down from a bank of ceiling glow strips. The walls were generally the same blocks, and there was a large glass mirror inset on one wall. Next to the single door was a booth or shield of sorts, which was topped with two feet of leaded glass. Another figure, also in a gray jumpsuit and hooded, stood there. The side of the shield facing the difference engine shimmered.
The more I saw, the less I liked it. In the middle of the room were an oak table and chair. On the table were several items I recognized.
In fact, I had to swallow. The difference engine on the table was almost an exact clone of my own SII machine, and it was fitted with the gadgetry Bruce and I had developed—that is, the projection/collection antennae, but nothing that resembled the de-ghosting projector.
“I take it you find this familiar?” There was a laugh.
“I have to compliment you on your thoroughness.”
“Take a seat, Minister Eschbach.”
I saw no reason not to, even though he didn’t sit, probably since there was only the single chair, except for the stool for the guard behind the booth shield.
“Let’s make it simple,” I suggested. “What do you want?”
“You know that already. We want you to bring back the ghost of the first prophet, the Revelator of Truth.”
“That might be possible,” I conceded.
“We’ve been led to believe that it is very possible.”
“Do you have any real timetable for all this?”
“We had hoped you could bring back the ghost of the Revelator within a week.”
“I’ll need some help from you.”
“You’re the expert.”
“Not on the prophet. To … recall … his ghost I’ll need some help on what teachings and sayings you feel are the most important.”
“Why?”
“The more information I have, the easier the location will be.” That was as close to the truth as I could get.
“That might be possible.” My escort gestured toward the difference engine. “You can begin anytime. It would be more useful if you didn’t attempt to direct any of the antennae in this direction.” His hand went to the mirror set into the wall facing the difference engine. “That is two-way glass. You’ll be under constant surveillance from at least two points.”
With a cough and then a click of the door, he was gone. The click told me another thing: it was locked from the outside as well, locking one guard in with me.
They’d had some briefing on my background. Not only that, but somehow, I felt they didn’t trust me.
I looked around the gray room. Everything was gray or reflective gray. There was too much money and preparation for simple fanatics, and that bothered me. It bothered me a lot.
Finally, I took out one of Bruce’s pens and some paper. Then I flicked on the difference engine. It called up my own directory. I swallowed again, when I saw the disk case by the keyboard—with the backups for the hidden files for ghost creation.
No … I wasn’t dealing with just a bunch of political schismatics. The combination of religious fanatics and an unknown political manipulator was even worse. I swallowed and looked around at the gray once more. My forehead was very damp, and I felt flushed all over.

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