Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America (38 page)

"Not at all. It was only that my friend Adam seems to be having a hard time making himself understood."

"I think we've overcome that difficulty," Hungerford said. "As a responsible publisher I mean to correct any mistake that finds its way into print. Naturally I'm astonished to discover that Mr. Dornwood borrowed another man's work without attribution. That error will be corrected."

"Corrected in what way?" Julian inquired, before Dornwood could stam-mer out some version of the same question.

"We'll print a notice in tomorrow's
Spark.
"

"A notice! Excellent," said Julian. "Still, there's the matter of the thousands of pamphlets that have already been distributed under Mr. Dornwood's name. If some profit or royalty has been paid to Mr. Dornwood by mistake—"

"Sir, there's no problem in that department. I'll have our accountants calculate the full amount and pay it to you directly."

"To Mr. Hazzard, you mean."

"I mean, of course, to Mr. Hazzard."

"Well, that shows a Christian spirit," said Julian. "Doesn't it, Adam?"

"It's almost contrite," I said, not a little astonished myself.

"But it seems to me," Julian went on, "though I'm no expert on the publishing business, you might be missing an opportunity, Mr. Hungerford, and a lucrative one, at that."

"Please explain," Hungerford said warily, while Dornwood cringed in his chair like a spanked child.

"We've established that Adam was the true author of
The Adventures ofCaptain Commongold.
 Was it well-written, do you think?"

"The public has taken to it in a big way. We've gone into a third printing.

That makes it well- written, by my definition. You say it was all your work, Mr. Hazzard?"

"All but the punctuation," I said, glaring at Dornwood.

"Does that suggest anything to you, as a publisher?" Julian asked. "Adam is too modest to mention it, but he's written more than just these matter-of-fact
Adventures.
 He has a novel in progress. Your press prints novels as well as newspapers, doesn't it, Mr. Hungerford?"

"We have a modest line of bound thrillers."

Julian asked me if my novel could be considered "thrilling."

"It has pirates in it," I said.

"There you are, then! Adam is a proven best-seller, and he's writing a book with pirates and other exciting persons in it—and here he is standing in your office!"

"I'll have a contract drawn up," Hungerford murmured.

"Mr. Hungerford is a canny businessman, Adam. He wants to publish your novel. Will the terms be generous, Mr. Hungerford?"

Hungerford quoted a colossal number, which he said was his standard rate for first-time novelists. I was quite taken aback, and probably turned as white in the face as Lawyer Lingley had when he recognized the President's nephew. I could not speak. My toes and fingers were numb.

"Good," Julian said. "But is Adam really a first-time novelist?—given the success of his previous work, I mean."

Hungerford nodded woodenly and announced a number twice as cosmic.

I might have fainted, if I had not had the desk to lean on.

"Is the number acceptable, Adam?"

I allowed that it was.

"As for Mr. Dornwood—" Julian began.

"He'll be fired immediately," Hungerford said.

"Please don't do that! I'm sure Adam doesn't want to punish Mr. Dornwood any further, now that the error had been corrected."

"I guess that's right," I managed to say. "I won't hold a grudge against any man. You can keep your job, Dornwood, for all of me. Although—"

Dornwood gave me a pleading look. He was no longer the smug Manhattanite. He might have been some condemned slave kneeling before a Pharaoh for clemency. It was an unusual sensation to hold another man's fate in my hands. I could ask for his apology, I supposed. I supposed I could ask for his head, too, and Hungerford would have it delivered it to me on a china plate. But I'm not a vindictive person.

"I want your typewriter," I said.

They say the typewriter was invented in 1870 or thereabouts. It has had many incarnations in the centuries since. It went out of production even before the End of Oil, and was re-introduced only recently. Modern typewriters are made by hand, by craftsmen who have studied innumerable rusty remains rescued from various Tips. They are expensive to buy, and costly to maintain.

They're also very heavy. Julian and I took turns carry ing Dornwood's typewriter down the street to a taxi stand.

"Say something," Julian suggested, "or I'll think you've lost your tongue."

"I'm out of words entirely."

"Unfortunate condition for a writer to be in."

That brought me up short.
Was
 I a writer, in the professional sense? I guessed I was. Hungerford and his lawyer had meant for me to sign a quit-claim this afternoon. Instead I had signed a contract to write a novel, and inked my name on a receipt for Theodore Dornwood's writing machine.

Probably those two items, the contract and the typewriter, were acceptable
bona fides
 in the author's trade.

I said to Julian, "I didn't know you could do that."

"Do what?"

"What you did at the
Spark
. Command obedience. Hungerford practically bowed to you."

As long as I had known Julian I had known he was an Aristo. And I knew Aristos were meant to be respected and obeyed. But we had ignored that dic-tum as boys, and been forced to ignore it as soldiers, and agreed to ignore it as friends, and it was seldom topmost in my mind. I reminded myself that to a stranger, even a highly-placed businessman such as Mr. Hungerford, Julian was no more or less than a member of the family of the reigning President.

No doubt Hungerford imagined that a word from Julian to his uncle would cause the
Spark
 to be shut down and placed under a permanent Dominion sanction. That was the kind of power Deklan Conqueror was able to exercise.

By implication—at least in the mind of Hungerford and his lawyer—it was Julian's power as well.

"It's a handy thing," Julian said as we maneuvered first the typewriter and then ourselves into an available cab, "to invoke the family name now and then."

"It must be daunting to possess such power, and to wield it."

"The power is all Deklan's, I'm afraid."

"Perhaps not all. You borrowed a little of it just now."

"I don't want it. The thought of it sickens me. The power to do good—that's the power I'd like to wield," said Julian.

"Anyone can do good in the world, Julian, to some degree." Or so my mother had often told me, and the
Dominion Reader for Young Persons
 con-curred.

"The kind of good I want to do requires the kind of power few men possess."

"What kind of good is it, that wants such muscle?"

But Julian wouldn't answer.

Calyxa wasn't impressed by the typewriter. She pointed out all its dents and scars—which were many, for the machine had been carried to Labrador and back at least once, and had seen hard ser vice under Dornwood. It still smelled a little of liquor and burnt hemp. But it was ser viceable and well-oiled, and did its job uncomplainingly.

Calyxa also reminded me that I didn't know how to type. There was a skill associated with it. I could find letters and poke them, but this was a relatively laborious way to conduct business. She told me she had seen a booklet at Grogan's called
Typewriting Self-Taught,
 and I promised her I would buy myself a copy, even if it cost as much as a Charles Curtis Easton novel.

If she was cynical about the typewriter, she was genuinely pleased by the news that I had signed a contract for my novel, and that Dornwood's royalties for
Julian Commongold
 had been consigned to me. We would have money of our own, in other words, and there was the solid promise of more to come.

"So we won't be running off to Buffalo," she said.

"We can support ourselves in New York City. You can sing in cafés or not, as the mood suits you."

"Assuming we survive the Independence Day festivities at the Executive Palace."

I wished she hadn't mentioned it. "Julian's almost certain no harm will come to us there."

"Almost certain," she said. "That's almost reassuring."

There was a sound like gunfire in the street that night.

I rose and went to the bedroom window. The window had been left open in order to soften the heat in the upper stories of the house, though barely a breeze was blowing.

I put my head outside. Manhattan lay quiet in the midnight darkness. I could hear the rustling of draped flags and the creek of insects. The bones of Sky-Scrapers cut angular silhouettes out of the stars, and here and there the fulgent glow of distant foundries smoldered. Down below, in the stables attached to the house, a sleepless horse snuffled and tapped its shod hoof on the ground.

More explosions followed, and the sound of stifled laughter. A crew of five or six boys dashed out between two of the row houses, lit punks glowing in their hands. Offended voices hailed them from other windows.

What I had taken for gunshots was only the sound of exploding firecrackers, tossed about by mischievous children in anticipation of the Fourth of July. Julian and I had played the same kind of tricks back in Williams Ford in our younger days. The dairymen had despised us for it, and claimed our concussions dried up the milk in the udders of their cows.

I couldn't bring myself to be angry.

The smell of black powder came in with the night air. Calyxa stirred and asked sleepily whether something was burning. "Smells like the whole town's on fire," she murmured.

"Just mischief," I told her.

I shivered, though the night was warm. Then I shuttered the window and went back to bed.

In the days before the Fourth of July I wrote up a special Introduction to the revised edition of
The Adventures of Captain Commongold (Now Revealed asJulian Comstock), the Youthful Hero of the Saguenay,
 and replaced all the commas Mr. Theodore Dornwood had deleted or misplaced. In the matter of the Introduction I accepted the tutelage of Sam Godwin, who said it was very important that I should not insult the reigning President, but rather say something to praise him.

I didn't like to do this. After everything Julian had said about his uncle, it felt like hypocrisy. I told Sam so.

"It
is
 hypocrisy. A lie, frankly. But it's for Julian's sake. It may save his life, or at least prolong it."

I could hardly refuse, then, for this was the same document that had imperiled Julian in the first place, and I was not sorry if it could be made to serve the opposite purpose. So I wrote down that Julian had joined the Army of the Laurentians under an assumed name "so that he would not receive any special treatment that might otherwise accrue to a President's nephew, but would be treated as an ordinary soldier of the line." Not that Deklan Comstock would ever stoop to influencing the military to obtain a better position for Julian:

"The President no doubt believes, as Julian does, that a man must distinguish himself on his own hook, and for his own behavior, and no one else's. It was Julian's fear that some commissioned officer might attempt to curry favor through favoritism; and his pride and patriotism would not allow him to accept any such unearned privilege." Julian, I wrote, wanted to achieve the condition of heroism, if he achieved it at all, "as Deklan Conqueror had: on his own behalf, and without any softening help."

Julian winced when he read this, and told me I ought to work for the Dominion, since I was so facile with a flattering lie; but Sam rebuked him and explained that I had included the passage at his insistence.

"I've been spending time with Army officers on leave from the Laurentians," Sam said. "In the high ranks, particularly the men around General Galligasken, there is considerable discontent with Deklan Comstock. The President attempts to rule the Army like a tyrant, and orders peculiar attacks and strategies of his own contriving; and when these fail—as they almost inevitably do—he punishes some hapless Major General, or appoints a more servile one in his place. Unfortunately our success at Chicoutimi isn't typical of the general progress of the War. The Army of the Laurentians can't continue to sustain losses at the current rate—the President will have to recall veterans, or whip up a new draft, if he wants to prevent a complete collapse. I tell you this in utmost confidence: if we can placate Deklan Conqueror, even temporarily, we may also outlast him."

That was unsettling news, even if it had a bright side, but there was nothing I could do about it. Julian accepted it with a nod and a frown.

Later that day I asked Sam whether he had been in contact with any of the Jews of New York City, for there were many of them—I had seen them walking black-suited to their Saturday ser vices, in an enclave near the
Egyptian part of town.
⁶⁰

"In Montreal I could afford such associations," he said. "As Sam Godwin I'm too well known to risk it."

"What would the risk be? Judaism is legal in this state, isn't it?"

"Legal but hardly respectable," said Sam. We were strolling down Broadway, not for the exercise but in order to have a conversation that wouldn't be overheard by servants. The rattle of carriage wheels, the clatter of horses' hooves, and the flapping of Independence Day banners made it impossible for anyone to eavesdrop on us—we could barely understand each other.

"What does respectability matter?" Having very little of my own, I was inclined to devalue the commodity.

"It matters not at all to me personally, but a great deal to certain people I deal with. The military, of course. The Dominion, it goes without saying. I can't do what I have been doing on behalf of Julian if I become known as a practicing Jew. And even in my private life—"

"Do you have one, Sam?" I asked, and immediately regretted the impertinence. He gave me a sour look.

"I hesitate to talk about it. But as a newly married man perhaps you can understand. Years ago—even before the death of Julian's father—I had the misfortune of falling in love with Mrs. Emily Baines Comstock."