Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America (40 page)

Calyxa regarded these fashionable young women skeptically. I suppose they seemed unserious to her. They wore sleeveless gowns, in order to display the number and prominence of the vaccination scars on their upper arms.

Mrs. Comstock said that such scars were a vain self-decoration: expensive, largely useless against disease, and a danger to the recipient. This might have been true, for several of the vaccinated women were pale, or seemed feverish or unsteady in their gait. But I suppose the pursuit of fashion has always carried a price, monetary or otherwise.

Julian did not stint his introductions as he passed through the crowd. He called me an "author" or a "scribe," and Calyxa was "Mrs. Hazzard, a vocal artist." Those of the elite to whom we spoke were unfailingly if briefly polite toward us. We were circulating a little uneasily among this mob of cheerful Eupatridians when the President of the United States made his first appearance.

He did not enter the Receiving Room, but greeted us from a sort of balcony at the top of a staircase. Stern and well-armed Republican Guardsmen were arrayed at his back, their demeanor suggesting that they might have preferred to aim their pistols at the crowd if etiquette had not precluded that hostile act. Silence fell over the room, until every face was turned toward Deklan Conqueror.

The coins didn't do him justice, I thought. Or perhaps it was the other way around. He was less handsome than his graven image, but somehow more imposing. It was true that he looked a little like Julian, minus the feathery yellow beard. In fact he looked the way I imagined Julian might look if he were years older and not entirely sane.

I don't say this to demean the President. Probably he couldn't help the way he looked. His features were not irregular; but there was something about his narrow eyes, his hawk nose, and his fixed, ingratiating grin that suggested madness. Not out-and- out lunacy, mind you, but the kind of subtle madness that dallies alongside sanity, and bides its time.

I saw Julian wince at the sight of his uncle. Mrs. Comstock drew a choked breath beside me.

The President wore a suit of formal black that suggested a uniform without actually being one. The medals pinned to his breast accentuated the effect.

He saluted the crowd, smiling all the while. He expressed his greetings to his guests, and thanked them all for coming, and regretted that he couldn't visit with them more personally, but encouraged them to enjoy themselves with refreshments. Dinner would be served before long, he said, followed by Independence Day festivities in the Main Hall, and further refreshments, and fireworks on the Great Lawn, and then he would deliver a speech. It was a proud day for the Nation, he said, and he hoped we would celebrate it vigorously and sincerely. Then he disappeared behind a purple curtain.

He wasn't seen again until after dinner.

When we filed into the dining hall we discovered that our seats at the long tables had been assigned to us, and marked with small ornaments bearing our names. Calyxa and I sat together, but nowhere near the other members of our party. Directly across from us—an unfortunate coincidence—was Nelson Wieland, the brutal industrialist who had made such a poor impression on Calyxa outside the stables. Seated beside him was a similarly aged gentleman in silk and wool, introduced to us as Mr. Billy Palumbo. It emerged in conversation over the soup course that Mr. Palumbo was an agriculturalist. He owned several vast domains in upper New York State, where his indentured people grew pea-beans and corn for the city market.

Mr. Wieland criticized the gourd soup, which he claimed was too thick.

"Seems all right to me," Mr. Palumbo rejoined. "I like a substantial broth.

Do you care for it at all, Mrs. Hazzard?"

"I suppose it's fine," Calyxa said in an indifferent tone.

"More than fine," I added. "I didn't know a common gourd could be made so palatable, or even harvested this time of year."

"I've tasted better," said Wieland.

The discussion continued in this culinary vein throughout the meal.

Boiled onions were served—undercooked, or over; we debated them. Medal-lions of lamb—Palumbo considered the cut too rare. Potatoes: picked young.

Coffee, too strong for Mr. Wieland's constitution. And so on.

By the time dessert was served—wintergreen ice-cream, a novelty to me—

Calyxa seemed prepared to throw her portion across the table, if Palumbo and Wieland didn't leave off the topic of food. Instead she lobbed a different kind of missile. "Do your indentured people eat this well, Mr. Palumbo?" she asked abruptly.

The question took Palumbo by surprise. "Well, hardly," he said. He smiled.
"Imagine serving them ice-cream! They'd soon grow too stout to work."
⁶³

"Or perhaps they might work harder, if they had such a thing to look forward to at the end of the day."

"I doubt it very much. Are you a radical, Mrs. Hazzard?"

"I don't call myself that."

"I'm glad to hear it. Compassion is a fine thing, but dangerous when it's misplaced. What I've learned in many years of overseeing the indentured is that they have to be treated very strictly at all times. They mistake kindness for weakness. And if they see a weakness in an Own er they'll take advantage of it. They're notorious for their laziness, and inventive in finding ways to pursue it."

"I agree," Mr. Wieland put in. "For instance, that servant you saw me discipline earlier to night. 'Only a broken wheel,' you might think. But let it slide, and tomorrow there would be two broken wheels, or a dozen."

"Yes, that's the logic of it," Palumbo said.

"Logic," Calyxa said, "if you carry it to its conclusion, might imply that men working against their will are not the most efficient laborers."

"Mrs. Hazzard! Good grief!" exclaimed Palumbo. "If the indentured are sullen, it's only because they fail to appreciate their own good fortune. Have you seen the pop u lar film
Eula's Choice
?"

"Yes, but I don't see what that has to do with it."

"It explains the origins of the indenture system very succinctly. A bargain was struck sometime around the end of the False Tribulation, and the same terms obtain today."

"You believe in the theory of Heritable Debt, Mr. Palumbo?"

" 'Heritable Debt' is the radical's term for it. You ought to be more careful in your reading, Mrs. Hazzard."

"It's a question of property," Wieland interjected.

"Yes," Calyxa said, "for the indentured don't have any—in fact they
are
property."

"Not at all. You defame the people you mean to defend. Of course the indentured have property. They own their bodies, their skills, if any, and their capacity for labor. If they don't
seem
 to own these things, it's only because the commodity has already been sold. It happened as in the film Mr. Palumbo mentions. Refugees from the Fall of the Cities traded the only goods they possessed—their hands, their hearts, and their votes—for food and shelter in a difficult time."

"A person ought not to be able to sell himself," Calyxa said, "much less his vote."

"If a person
owns
 himself then he must be able to
sell
 himself. Else what meaning does property have? As for the vote, he isn't deprived of it—it still exists—he has only signed it over to his landed employer, who votes it for him."

"Yes, so the Own ers can control that sorry excuse for a Senate—"

This was perhaps too much to say. Nearby heads turned toward us, and Calyxa blushed and lowered her voice. "I mean, these are opinions that I have read. In any case, the bargain you describe was made more than a century ago, if it was made at all. Nowadays people are born into indenture."

"A debt is a debt, Mrs. Hazzard. The commitment doesn't vanish simply because a man has had the bad luck to die. If a man's possessions pass by right to his survivors, so do his obligations. What have you been reading that left you laboring under such misapprehensions?"

"A man named ... oh I think Parmentier," Calyxa said, pretending innocence.

"Parmentier! That Eu ro pe an terrorist! Good God, Mrs. Hazzard, you do need some direction in your studies!" Wieland cast an accusing glance at me.

"I have recommended the novels of Mr. Charles Curtis Easton," I said.

"The spread of literacy is the problem here," said Palumbo. "Oh, I'm all in favor of a sensible degree of literacy—as you must be, Mr. Hazzard, given your career as a journalist. But it has an infectious tendency. It spreads, and discontent spreads along with it. Admit one literate man to a coffle and he'll teach the others the skill; and what they read won't be Dominion-approved works, but pornography, or the lowest kind of cheap publications, or fomentive po liti cal tracts. Parmentier! Why, Mrs. Hazzard, just a week ago I purchased a string of three hundred men from a planter in Utica, at what appeared to be a bargain price. I kept them apart from my other stock for a time, a sort of quarantine period, and I'm glad I did, for it turned out reading was endemic among them, and Parmentierist pamphlets were circulating freely. That kind of thing can ruin an entire Estate, if it flourishes unchecked."

Calyxa didn't ask what Mr. Palumbo had done to check the flourishing of literacy among his "stock," perhaps because she feared the answer. But her face betrayed her feelings. She tensed, and I worried that she was about to fling some new accusation across the table, or perhaps a fork. It was at this moment, fortunately, that the dessert plates were cleared away.

Intoxicating drinks circulated freely after the meal, including such expensive abominations as Champagne and Red Wine. I did not partake, though the Eupatridians went at it like horses at a trough.

Deklan Comstock briefly appeared from another indoor balcony—he preferred a commanding height, Julian said—and invited us to step into the ballroom adjoining, where the band would play patriotic tunes. We followed at the President's bidding. The music struck up at once, and some of the Aristos, well lubricated with fiery fluids, began to dance. I didn't dance, and Calyxa didn't want to; so we looked for genial company instead, well distant from Mr. Wieland and Mr. Palumbo.

We found company—or it found us—but it was not congenial, in the long run.

"Mr. Hazzard," said a booming voice.

I turned, and saw a man in clerical garb.

I gathered he was some high functionary of the Dominion, for he wore a broad-rimmed felt hat with silver trimming, a sober black jacket, and a formal cotton shirt on which the legend
John 3:16
 was stitched in golden thread. I didn't recognize his face, which was florid and round. He carried a glass in his hand, and the glass was half-filled with an amber fluid, and his breath smelled like the copper-coil stills Ben Kreel used to discover and destroy in the indentured men's quarters back in Williams Ford. His eyes glittered with intrigue or drink.

"You know me, but I don't know you," I said.

"On the contrary, I don't know you at all, but I've read your pamphlet on the subject of Julian Comstock, and someone was kind enough to point you out to me." He extended the hand which was not holding a drink. "My name is Simon Hollingshead, and I'm a Deacon of the Diocese of Colorado Springs."

He said that as if it was a trivial thing. It wasn't. The simple title belied a powerful position in the Dominion hierarchy. In fact the only clergymen more elevated than the Deacons of Colorado Springs were the seventy members of the Dominion High Council itself.

Pastor Hollingshead's hand was hot and moist, and I let go of it as soon as I could do so without offending him.

"What brings you to the east?" Calyxa asked warily.

"Ecclesiastical duties, Mrs. Hazzard—nothing you would understand."

"On the contrary, it sounds fascinating."

"Well, I can't speak as freely as I would like. But the eastern cities have to be taken in hand from time to time. They tend to drift away from orthodoxy, left to their own devices. Unaffiliated Churches spring up like fungal growths.

The mixing of classes and nationalities has a well-known degenerative influence."

"Perhaps the Easterners drink too freely," I couldn't help saying.

" 'Wine that gladdens the heart of man,' " quoted the Deacon,
though it appeared to be something more powerful than wine in his glass.
⁶⁴
"It's sacred doctrine I've come to protect, not personal sobriety. Drinking isn't a sin, though drunkenness is. Do I seem drunk to you, Mr. Hazzard?"

"No, sir, not noticeably. What sacred doctrines are in danger?"

"The ones that prohibit laxness in administering a flock. Eastern clergy will overlook the damnedest things, pardon me. Lubriciousness, licentiousness, lust—"

"The alliterative sins," Calyxa said quietly.

"But enough of my problems. I meant only to congratulate you on your history of Julian Comstock's military adventures."

I thanked him kindly, and pretended to be modest.

"Young people have very little in the way of uplifting literature available to them. Your work is exemplary, Mr. Hazzard. I see it hasn't yet received the Dominion Stamp. But that can be changed."

It was a generous offer, which might result in an increase of sales, and for that reason I thought we shouldn't offend Deacon Hollingshead unnecessarily. Calyxa, however, was in a sharp mood, and unimpressed with Hollingshead's ecclesiastical rank and powers.

"Colorado Springs is a big town," she said. "Doesn't it have problems of its own you could be looking after?"

"Surely it does! Corruption can creep in anywhere. Colorado Springs is the very heart and soul of the Dominion, but you're right, Mrs. Hazzard, vice breeds there as well as anywhere else. Even in my own family—"

He hesitated then, as if unsure whether he ought to proceed. Perhaps the liquor had made him distrust his tongue. To my dismay, Calyxa wouldn't let the matter drop. "Vice, in a Deacon's family?"

"My own daughter has been a victim of it." He lowered his voice. "I wouldn't ordinarily discuss this. But you seem to be a thoughtful young woman. You don't bare your arms like so many of the ladies present, nor cover your skin with ugly vaccination marks."