Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America (52 page)

He was afraid we were about to be assaulted by the enemy, and I soothed him by giving him the good news.

He was less cheered by it than I expected. He took up pencil and paper and wrote:

ARE WE SAVED?

"Yes, Julian, that's what I've been trying to tell you! The men are coming into the streets, cheering!"

USELESS THEN I MEAN OUR ATTEMPT TO BREAK THROUGH

"Well, but how could we have known—?"

HOW MANY DEAD FOR NO PURPOSE HUNDREDS THOUSANDS STILL ALIVE IF ONLY I HAD WAITED

"That's not the way to think of it, Julian!"

BLOOD ON MY HANDS

"No—you were magnificent!"

He refused to be convinced.

An adjutant arrived with word that the Admiral wanted to see Julian, in order to begin to plan the evacuation of our troops from Striver.

TELL HIM I'M NOT IN,

Julian wrote; but he didn't mean it—it was only his injuries speaking.

The Admiral was promptly admitted.

It was so heartening to see the old naval officer again that I nearly wept.

His uniform was so bright and bold, compared to our tattered rags, that he seemed to have descended from a distant Valhalla well-supplied with patriotic tailors. He looked at Julian with the knowledgeable sympathy of a man who had seen injured men, and worse, many times before. "Don't rise," he said, as Julian struggled to sit straight up and essay a salute. "And don't try to speak, if your wounds make it difficult."

I CAN WRITE,

Julian hastily set down, and I read the message to Admiral Fairfield on his behalf.

"Well," said Fairfield, "there is not much to say that can't wait a short while. The important thing is that your men have been rescued—the siege is lifted."

TOO LATE, wrote Julian, but I couldn't communicate anything so pessimistic to the Admiral. "Julian thanks you," I said, ignoring the looks he shot in my direction.

The expression was all in his eyes, since Julian's jaw was too badly hurt to move—even a frown would have wounded him.

"No thanks are called for. In fact I apologize for delaying as long as we have."

DEKLAN MEANT FOR ME TO DIE HERE

A WELL-LAID PLAN

WHAT CHANGED?

"Julian says he can hardly accept your apology. He does wonder what circumstances made this rescue possible."

"Of course—I forget you've been cut off from all news," the Admiral said. "The order that kept us out of Lake Melville was rescinded."

DEKLAN MUST BE DEAD

"Julian asks about the health of his uncle."

"That's the key to it," Admiral Fairfield said, nodding. "The plain fact is, Deklan Conqueror has been deposed. In part it was because of the reports of the Goose Bay campaign you sent out when the
Basilisk
 last saw these shores, Col o nel Hazzard. The
Spark
 published them in the ignorant belief that Deklan Conqueror would want Julian's heroism widely publicized. But it was obvious enough, reading between the lines, that Julian had been betrayed by the Executive Branch. The Army of the Laurentians was already profoundly unhappy about Deklan's misrule and arrogance—the balance was finally tipped."

DID THEY KILL HIM?

"Was Deklan Conqueror's abdication wholly voluntary?" I asked.

"It wasn't voluntary at all. A brigade came down from the Laurentians and marched on the Presidential Palace. The Republican Guard chose not to resist—their opinion of Deklan Comstock is no higher than anyone else's."

DOES THE MURDERER YET LIVE?

"Was Julian's uncle injured in the pro cess?"

"He's a prisoner in the Palace for the time being."

WHO TAKES COMMAND OF THE PRESIDENCY?

"Has a successor been named?"

Here Admiral Fairfield looked somewhat abashed. "I wish I had a more ceremonial way to convey the information," he said, "and a venue for it grander than this ruined building, but—yes," he said, looking Julian hard in the eye, "
a successor has been named,
 pending my confirmation that he has survived. That successor is
you
, General Comstock. Or I should say
President
Comstock. Or
Julian Conqueror,
 as the infantry like to style you."

Julian sank back into his rude bed, his eyes clenched shut. All color fled from his face. I expect Admiral Fairfield took this as an expression of pain or shock due to his injury. There was an embarrassed silence. Then Julian gestured for the pad and pencil again.

THIS IS WORSE THAN DEATH (he wrote) I WISH THE DUTCH HAD KILLED ME OH GOD NO TELL HIM GO TO HELL ALL OF THEM GO TO HELL I WILL NOT SERVE

"Julian is too feverish to express his astonishment," I said. "He's humbled by the honor so unexpectedly bestowed upon him, and hopes he'll prove worthy of it. But he's tired now, and needs to rest."

"Thank you," the Admiral said to me, and "Thank you, Mr. President," to Julian.

Ever the Virtues blush to find
The Vices wearing their badge behind,
And Graces and Charities feel the fire
Wherein the sins of the age expire.
—WHITTIER

It falls to me now to write the final chapter of my story, which is an account of the reign of Julian Conqueror, Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces and President of the United States, as I experienced it, with all its attendant tragedies and conciliatory joys.

Those events are still close to my heart, though considerable time has passed since their conclusion. My hand trembles at the task of describing them. But the reader and I have come this far, which is no small distance, and I mean to bring the project to completion, what ever the cost.

It occurs to me that one virtue of the Typewriter as a literary invention is that tears shed during the act of composition are less likely to fall upon the paper and blot the ink. A certain clarity is preserved, not otherwise obtainable.

Manhattan was all got up for the celebration of the Nativity when we arrived at the docks, and such a frenzy of decoration I had never seen, as if the city were a Christmas tree decked with candles and colored tinsel, with the Sacred Day less than forty-eight hours distant—but all of that meant little or nothing to me, for I was anxious to discover the fate of Calyxa.

Julian and I, along with the other survivors of the Goose Bay Campaign, had recuperated for three weeks at the American hospital in St. John's. Fresh food, clean linen, and boiled water restored us to health as effectively as any medicine could; and Julian's facial wound, though my stitching of it was inexpert, had nearly healed. Evidence of my inadequacy as a physician would persist in the form of a scar that curved between Julian's jaw-hinge and his right nostril like a second mouth, primly and permanently shut. But that was little enough, as war wounds go, and Julian had never been vain about his appearance.

His mood had also improved, or at least he had wrestled down his pessimism. What ever the reason, he had given up his initial re sis tance and submitted to all the plans the Army of the Laurentians had laid for him. He was willing, he had told me, to assume the Office of the Presidency, at least for a time, if only to undo a fraction of the wickedness his uncle had committed.

The appointment to the Executive was none of his doing, of course. It had come about in his absence, and his name had been put up as a compromise. My early dispatches to the
Spark,
 carried out of Striver on board the
Basilisk
 after the Battle of Goose Bay, may have played a role in these developments. No doubt Deklan Comstock would have preferred to have the news of Julian's survival suppressed; but the editors of the
Spark
 didn't know that, and assumed they were doing the President a favor by publicizing his nephew's heroism and hard times.

Those news items were widely reprinted. The American public, at least in the eastern half of the country, had become enamored of Julian Comstock as a youthful National Hero; and his reputation was equally golden among the forces of the Army of the Laurentians. Meanwhile, in the higher echelons of the military, resentment of Deklan's war policies had heated up to the boiling point. Deklan had mismanaged so many audacious but ill-designed Campaigns, and jailed so many loyal and spotless Generals, that the Army had resolved to unseat him and replace him with someone more sympathetic to their goals.
The publication of my reports helped stoke that smoldering fire to a white-hot intensity.
⁸⁴

All that stood in the way of a military overthrow of Julian's uncle was the choice of a plausible successor, always a ticklish business. An acceptable candidate can be difficult to procure. A tyrant's overthrow by military action doesn't admit of any formal demo cratic choice, and important contesting interests—the Eupatridians, the Senate, the Dominion of Jesus Christ on Earth, even in some sense the general public—have to be addressed and mollified.

The Army of the Laurentians could not meet all these conditions, nor could it readily obtain the consent of its distant partner, the Army of the Californias, which was much more a creature of the Dominion than the Eastern army. But the necessity of replacing Deklan Conqueror was admitted by all.

The solution eventually reached was a temporary one. Succession by dynastic inheritance was allowed under the
52nd Amendment to the Constitution;
⁸⁵
and since Deklan was childless, that mantle could be construed as falling to his heroic nephew Julian—who at the time was caught up in the Siege of Striver, and wouldn't complicate matters either by accepting or by declining.

Thus Julian had become a
figurehead,
 almost an
abstraction,
 and acceptable in that form, until the tyrant was hauled out of his throne room by soldiers and clapped into a basement prison.

Now that Julian had survived the siege, however, and since he had been rescued by the single- minded efforts of Admiral Fairfield, the
abstract
 threatened to become uncomfortably
real
. Had Julian been killed, some other arrangement would have been made, perhaps to everyone's greater satisfaction. But Julian Conqueror lived—and the public sentiment on his behalf had grown so clamorous that it would have been impossible
not
 to install him in the Presidency, for fear of triggering riots.

For that reason he had been surrounded, both during his recovery and on the voyage back to New York City, by a phalanx of military advisors, civilian con sul tants, clerical toadies, and a thousand other brands of manipulators and office-seekers. My opportunities to speak to him privately had been few, and when we arrived in Manhattan he was quickly enclosed in a mob of Senators and beribboned soldiers, and borne away toward the Presidential Palace; and I could not even say goodbye, or arrange a time to meet once more.

But that wasn't a pressing problem—it was Calyxa who was foremost on my mind. I had written her several letters from the hospital in St. John's, and even telegraphed her once, but she hadn't responded, and I feared the worst.

I made my way from the docks to the luxurious brown-stone house of Emily Baines Comstock, where I had left Calyxa in the care of Julian's mother. It was heartening to see that familiar building, apparently unchanged, bathed in the glow of a Manhattan dusk, as sturdy a habitation as it had ever been, with lantern light glinting sweetly at the curtained windows.

But as I approached the walk a soldier stepped out of the shadows and raised his hand. "No admittance, sir," he said.

That was astonishing; and I was outraged, as soon as I was sure I had understood the man correctly. "Get out of my way. That's an order," I added, since my Col o nel's stripes were intact and plainly visible.

The soldier blanched but didn't stand down. He was a young man, probably a fresh draftee, a lease- boy hauled out of some southern Estate, judging by the accent in his voice. "Sorry, Col o nel, but I have my orders—very strict—no one to be admitted without authorization."

"My wife is in this house, or was, or ought to be—what under heaven are
you
 doing here?"

"Preventing exit or entry, sir."

"By what authority?"

"Writ of Ecclesiastical Quarantine."

"That's a mouthful! What's it signify?"

"Don't precisely know, sir," the soldier confessed. "I'm new at this."

"Well, where do these orders emanate from?"

"My superior officer down at the Fifth Avenue headquarters, most directly; but I think it has something to do with the Dominion. 'Ecclesiastical' means 'church,' don't it?"

"I expect it does. . . . Who is inside, that you're guarding so adamantly?"

"Only a couple of women."

My heart beat twice, but I pretended to keep aloof. "Your dangerous prisoners are women?"

"I deliver food parcels to them now and again ... women, sir, yes, sir, a young one and an old one. I don't know anything about their crimes. They don't seem hateful, or especially dangerous, though they're a little short-tempered now and then, especially the younger female—she hardly speaks but it bites."

"They're in there now?"

"Yes, sir; but as I said, no admittance."

I couldn't contain myself any longer. I shouted Calyxa's name, at the greatest volume I could muster.

The guard cringed, and I saw his hand stray to the pistol on his hip. "I don't think that's allowed, sir!"

"Do your orders say anything about preventing a uniformed officer from shouting in the street?"

"I guess they don't, specifically, but—"

"Then,
specifically,
 follow your orders as they were written—guard the door, if you have to, but don't improvise, and don't pay any attention to what's going on the sidewalk; the sidewalks of New York are not your kingdom right at the moment."

"Sir," the young man said, blushing; but he didn't contradict me, and I called out Calyxa's name several more times, until the head of my beloved wife at last appeared at an upstairs window.