Free Ghosts of Columbia by L.E. Modesitt Jr. Page B

compromise in solid law. Personally, I still thought Jefferson had been a great man. You have to judge people by the times they lived in, not the times you live in.
    The same drizzle that had enveloped New Bruges the day before had reached the Federal District of Columbia, except it was warmer, steamier, unseasonably hot, even in the former swamp that was the Republic’s capital.
    I wiped my forehead on the cotton handkerchief, sweating more than I would have liked. At least I didn’t have to go to the congressional offices. Electric fans
were their sole official source of cooling; only the White House was fully air-conditioned. That had been one of Speaker Roosevelt’s decisions—that air conditioning would only make the Congress want to spend more time than was wise in Columbia.
    As ceremonial head of state, of course, the president was obliged to stay whether he liked it or not. So he got the air conditioning, and so did the rococo monstrosity that housed his budget examiners. His budget reviews and public criticisms were about the only real substantive powers the president had. I had seen a lot done with budget reviews, and members of Congress didn’t like to seem ridiculous.
    As for the heat, the Congress made do with fans or left Washington, and the civil servants sweated. Of course, ministers did find ways to cool their individual offices, but no one talked much about it, so long as they spent their own money. In the 1930s, Speaker Roosevelt had also insisted that the growth of the various ministries would be restricted by the heat. I hadn’t seen that—only a lot of sweating civil servants. Anyway, how could one imagine a government much larger than the half million or so on the federals’ dole?
    I hailed an electrocab outside the station. “A dollar extra for a single ride.”
    “The single is yours, sir.” The driver opened the door. “Where to?”
    “The Ministry of Natural Resources, Sixteenth Street door, north end.”
    We passed the new Smithsonian Gallery—Dutch Masters—built to contain the collection of Hendrik, the Grand Duke of Holland. At least he had been Grand Duke until Ferdinand VI’s armies had swept across the Low Countries.
    Columbian Dutch, the oil people, had paid for the building. The Congress had approved it over my objections to the design—heavy—walled marble, stolid and apparently strong enough to withstand the newest Krupp tanks, even the kinds the Congress had shipped to the Brits and the Irish to discourage Ferdinand from attempting some sort of cross-channel adventure. Not that a gross of metal monsters had ever stopped any would-be conqueror.
    Besides, Ferdinand was through with conquests. The Austro-Hungarian empire was nothing if not patient. England would not fall until Ferdinand VII took the throne. By then, most of the ghosts in France would have departed, and the remaining French would be dutiful citizens of the Empire, happy with their taxes and the longest period of peace and prosperity in their history—bought only at the cost of thirty percent of their former population.
    Ghosting worked both ways—but basically too many ghosts hurt the locale where they were created. That was why ghosts almost stopped William the Unfortunate’s conquest of England, but not the Vikings or the early Mongols. They also stopped a lot of murders and slowed early population growth—second wives didn’t take too well to a weeping female ghost who had died in childbirth.
    I was probably being too cautious, but strange wire messages recalling former agents to duty and promising stranger assignments have a tendency to reintroduce
occupational paranoia all too quickly. I could feel my chest tighten even as I thought about it.
    “Here you be, sir.”
    I nodded and handed him two dollars and a silver half-dollar.
    “Thank you, sir.”
    After offering my identification card to the guard—I’d never surrendered it—I walked to the corner of the building and took the steps to the