(eng) L. E. Modesitt - Ghosts 01 by Of Tangible Ghosts

Author:Of Tangible Ghosts [Ghosts, Of Tangible]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

16

Since the house was spotless—Marie did more than she should have when I was gone and less than

she felt necessary, I was sure—all the housekeeping I had to do on Saturday was wash the dishes I had

used for breakfast.

After I ate and did the dishes, I did get back to running and exercising. I even went over the top of

the hill and along the ridge. Then I raked a huge pile of leaves into the compost pile below the garden and

sprinkled lime over them.

A hundred years of work on the thin soil had resulted in soil that wasn’t that thin any longer, and the

grass was more like a carpet. The garden tomatoes were as good as any, and the time-domesticated

raspberries and black raspberries—well, I had frozen pies, freezer jam, and whole frozen berries, more

than enough to last until the next summer.

After my groundskeeping, with sweat and leaf fragments sticking together and plastered even under

my clothes, I stripped, took a shower, and dressed.

Had I seen a flash of white in the study? I looked around, but didn’t see Carolynne. With a sigh, I

extricated the strongbox from the wall safe and pulled out another sheaf of bills for Bruce. There were

still enough left, but how long they would last if I kept funding unique hardware was another question.

Outside it was sunny, but the wind was even more bitter than it had been earlier in the morning and

ripped at the last of the leaves clinging stubbornly to their trees. I passed but a handful of vehicles, mostly

haulers, as I drove the steamer back south to Zuider and LBI to pick up the perturbation replicator. With

just scattered brown leaves on the oaks and maples, the dark winter green of the pines stood out on the

woodlots higher on the low hills.

The narrow streets of Zuider were half filled, mainly with families in well-polished steamers, probably

taking children to soccer practice or music lessons or the like, or headed out to shop for bargains in the

new mall, the latest facet of Columbian Dutch culture.

There was another steamer in the LBI lot besides Bruce’s battered Olds ragtop. He’d gotten it when

the Pontiac people folded and he couldn’t get decent service on his ’52 rag-top.

A long-haired man was discussing musical programware. “I need more instant memory and a direct

audio line ...”

I had heard about the so-called synthesizer revolution and the predictions of Babbage-generated

music or the reproduction of master concerts on magnetic disks or thin tapes. I shuddered at the thought

of music being reduced to plastic. Somehow, at least a vinyl disc had the feel of semipermanence. Music

on plastic tapes—that would be ghost music.

While Bruce talked with the would-be Babbage composer, I wandered around, mostly thinking.

Bruce seemed able to create all this hardware from rough specifications; if it worked, why hadn’t a lot of

other techies done the same? Most weren’t as creative as Bruce, and most had no need.

There also was another reason. Gerald’s comment dropped into my mind—the point that you really

couldn’t murder someone in a laboratory to study the ghost.

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